We have said endlessly that a NoE, equipped with the equivalent of 5000 euros per year per researcher involved, cannot solve such a structural deficiency, and that this had to be dealt with at the adequate level. We suggested a transversal action by structural funds and said we were ready to co-invest (at least the time of PRIME researchers) in order to help such action develop. We also proposed such directions to the ministers in charge of research of some new member states. We must recognise that we were not successful in our attempts.
Thus, apart from our Hungarian colleagues fully involved in numerous PRIME activities, we decided to engage around two main directions :
(i) Training activities. We offered young PhD and post-doc researchers the possibility to participate in all training events (we allocated specific budgets for it, we even dedicated 2 summerschools to ‘transition’ comparing Eastern and Southern Europe) and we offered persons in managerial positions to follow our professional short courses.
(ii) Focus our research efforts on indicators (because of the pressures by the Union to have adequate data). What have been the results ?
(i) The two dedicated summer schools in 2004 and 2005 attracted 20 students from new member states (approximately half the audience), but students from new member states have been quite shy in applying to all other events : the other summer schools (with at best one or two students from NMS each), the PhD conferences (in 4 sessions we have had just over 10 participants from NMS, 90% coming to the Budapest PhD conference). One has to reflect about this difficulty students have to expose themselves outside from their ‘traditional’ environment. The same has applied to professional courses demonstrating the limited interest of acting managers for life-long training.
(ii) A first seminar held in 2004 showed real interest in indicators from a number of groups (mostly from neighbouring fields). It took two years to turn it into new research work with the incorporation of 4 new member states in the project on the development of new indicators on
project funding. This has been the sole significant achievement, and, however interesting the results are, this raises numerous questions about the future of research and innovation policies in new member states : how can we imagine that NMS do not need such proximity capabilities when German or Spanish regions support such developments ?
These conclusions follow the analysis made by A.M. Inzelt for the strategic meeting we conducted in 2007 (
click here for downloading the document). She proposed three directions for the future, which, she recognised will bear fruits only in the medium to long term.
(i) The community should keep focusing on the young generation, opening all training events to them and, until they fully engage, go on developing specific events for them.
(ii) Go on developin g a pro-active approach for integrating teams from NMS in projects (as was done for project funding, but one must remember here the amount of initial investments made by PRIME for driving these teams to join the project), and
(iii) put on the research agenda ‘topics that are focusing on CEE specific S&T and innovation policy issues’ (which requires a way of organising this process). They represent our input to post-PRIME developments. suggested directions that we might follow in the future.
