Science|Business Widening Newsletter No.39 | Sign up here
11/09/2024
“The Widening” is a product of Science|Business and is not related to EU institutions or programmes.

Focus on central and eastern Europe

Welcome to a new edition of The Widening newsletter, a roundup of news and analysis of research and innovation policy and investments in central and eastern Europe, delivered to your inbox twice a month. Sign up here.

Edited by Florin Zubașcu

This week we take an in-depth look at how Euraxess helped close the east-west knowledge gap in the EU. Also, we learn from Hungarian researchers how the Horizon funding ban affected their international reputation, and what Czechia intends to do with fresh money in its R&D coffers.

The latest news

20 YEARS OF EURAXESS: 2024 marks two decades of the pan-European jobs and mobility platform Euraxess. Initially known as the European Researchers Mobility Portal, Euraxess has grown, with 43 countries now participating, and more than 110,000 researchers using the platform to find international job and funding opportunities, navigate foreign visa and pension systems, and network with institutions abroad and back home. But has it helped close the east-west knowledge gap? Sarah Drumm tries to answer.

HUNGARIAN RESEARCHERS IN LIMBO AGAIN: A new report by the Hungarian Young Academy shows around 40% of early career researchers have experienced some form of negative consequence of the EU funding ban that applies to 30 research institutions, including 21 universities, in Hungary. 

The survey reveals international collaborators and their funding agencies are reluctant to write joint proposals with Hungarian researchers, even if they are not working in one of the institutions affected by the ban. International consortium leaders often ask Hungarian researchers to move their projects to institutions that are not suspended, or simply to change jobs. Read the full story here.

GETTING CLOSER TO THE EU TARGET: Czechia’s budget for science and research will go up by nearly 8% next year, to €1.72 billion, the government has announced. This will provide extra support for Czech scientists, new funding for their projects and for increased international collaboration. It also means Czechia is getting closer and closer to the EU R&D spending average of 2.2% of GDP, and is the EU13 country that is closest to the 3% EU target. More on this here.

HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY? We welcome opinion pieces and other contributions on R&I policy in central and eastern Europe. Send yours to news@sciencebusiness.net.

In other news

STARTING GRANTS ARE SPARSE IN EASTERN EUROPE: The ERC announced the results of its latest €780 million round of starting grants and the numbers look bad for the Widening countries. Five grantees are from Portugal, while Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovenia go two each. Croatia has one grantee, while Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Latvia have none. The data is available here.

JOINING FORCES: Poland’s National Science Centre (NCN) will help the Medical Research Agency (MRA) set up its calls for basic research projects in medical and health sciences, according to an agreement signed in Krakow last week. NCN officers will advise MRA on the calls, run training courses on proposal evaluation procedures, and recommend candidates for external evaluators.

“The NCN supports researchers in all research fields and the MRA, clinical doctors,” said NCN director Krzysztof Jóźwiak. “We hope that the agreement will result in the calls on translational medicine which is of interest to both agencies.”

HUNGARIAN SCIENTISTS GO TO CHINA: A group of 30 politicians, academics, corporate and university leaders from Hungary are visiting China this week on the occasion of the Pujiang Innovation Forum. The visit is organised by the Hungarian government and marks the 75th anniversary since it established diplomatic relations with China. "The forum provides a great opportunity to present the scientific, research and innovation strengths and world-class achievements of Hungary at one of the largest innovation conferences in China and thus in the world,” said László Bódis, Hungarian deputy state secretary for innovation. “Innovation and science are international genres: we Hungarians can only be successful if we strengthen our cooperation in these areas towards both west and east."

UKRAINE PARTNERS IN HORIZON EUROPE MINING PROJECT: The European Commission has awarded a four-year €7 million grant under the Resilient Value Chains 2024 initiative for to a European consortium working on the extraction and processing of titanium and other raw materials. Ukraine’s Velta LLC and Velta RD Titan Research and Development Centre are partners in the project, along with 11 leading European companies and research institutes. Velta’s CEO Andriy Brodsky said the funding confirms EU’s recognition of Ukraine as a strategic partner “capable of establishing a secure titanium supply chain from raw materials to final titanium products.” The project starts this month.

Mark your calendars 

BRUSSELS, 18-19 SEPTEMBER: The European Commission is organising a high-level conference on the European Research Area (ERA). Policymakers, researchers and innovators will look back at progress made over the past four years, after former EU research commissioner Mariya Gabriel pushed for a revamp of ERA, the EU’s ‘single market for research’. More details here.

WARSAW, 23 SEPTEMBER: Maria Leptin, the president of the European Research Council (ERC) will visit Poland to talk to researchers who are planning to apply for ERC grants and to administrative staff in research institutions. Leptin will be hosted by the Polish Academy of Sciences. More details here.

PRAGUE, 24 SEPTEMBER: The second edition of Prague.Bio conference will gather start-ups, industrial partners, investors, researchers, and other biotech experts from central Europe.

BRNO, 2 OCTOBER: The annual conference of the Czech Association of Research Managers and Administrators will take place in Brno on 2nd October. More than 150 project management professionals from across the Czech Republic will gather to discuss the role of their profession.

BUCHAREST, 2-3 OCTOBER: The How to Web conference describes itself as the meeting point for eastern Europe’s technology scene. Over 100 speakers and 3,000 attendees are expected this year in Romania’s capital. Find out more here.

WARSAW, 29-30 OCTOBER: The Deep Tech CEE Summit offers a chance to dive into the goings on in central and eastern Europe and connect with like minded entrepreneurs. There is also an investors’ day on 28 October. Find out more here. 

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