Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio, Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Catharine Savia, you're the EU Commission for Innovation, Startups and Research.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us on Bloomberg today.
Speaker 2: You've just released this Choose Europe plan. This is going
Speaker 2: to flesh out the strategy to boost research within Europe.
Speaker 2: There's half a billion dollars at stake. Care tuk us
Speaker 2: through a little bit of the strategy in what you're
Speaker 2: trying to achieve here.
Speaker 1: The strategy is very simple. It's first Europe always to science,
Speaker 1: and so we want science to choose Europe. So that's
Speaker 1: mean that for Europe science should remain open and independent
Speaker 1: and we respect scientific freedom. This is the first, so
Speaker 1: to say Pewer, of the strategy, and the second is
Speaker 1: of course investing in talent, and the third is like
Speaker 1: accelerate and boost the innovation. So those are the three
Speaker 1: focuses on this Choose Europe for Science for business, I
Speaker 1: would say.
Speaker 2: And so when you think about sort of half a
Speaker 2: billion dollars being deployed to that end, how does that
Speaker 2: money sort of productively spent in order to achieve those ends?
Speaker 1: So this is the half a billion for the next
Speaker 1: two and a half years until the end of this
Speaker 1: programming period of the biggest actually program for research and
Speaker 1: innovation in the world, which.
Speaker 3: Is Horizon euro Program.
Speaker 1: That's mean that we want to focus, of course on
Speaker 1: the early career researchers. We actually work on the pile
Speaker 1: choose Europe for Science for the early career researchers, and
Speaker 1: then we have European Research Council, in which council the
Speaker 1: scientists decide the priorities, the calls and choose the projects,
Speaker 1: absolutely autonomous and independent of the politicians. And we want
Speaker 1: to deploy extra to hundred and twenty million for the
Speaker 1: actually two hundred and eighty million almost for the extra
Speaker 1: support for researchers, which is a research council. It's small
Speaker 1: focus on.
Speaker 3: Really the best researchers with their teams in the world.
Speaker 2: And you say it's sort of value neutral in terms
Speaker 2: of what the science is investigating, but there certainly are
Speaker 2: objectives within the European Union to try to boost certain
Speaker 2: sectors and innovate and things like that. So what sectors
Speaker 2: are you trying to get attract more of those researches
Speaker 2: and scientists in order to give your that competitive edge.
Speaker 1: You know, you open research couns, so I want to
Speaker 1: say it, but of course I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: the sectors later. The Eupan Research Council, it's really bottom
Speaker 1: up driven. It's not so it's open for everybody. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's curiosity driven projects. So this is actually the fundamental,
Speaker 1: the basic research without which we can not he have
Speaker 1: excellent innovasion and breakthrough technologies. So this is the for
Speaker 1: the European Resource Council. But the four, the sectors who
Speaker 1: have really common European interest, are really important for European competitiveness,
Speaker 1: European economic security. It's like moles, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to surprise nobody's AI. Of course, life science is it's
Speaker 1: a bi economy, it's a clean tech. So those sectors quantum,
Speaker 1: which one we have focused in so European Innovation Council
Speaker 1: in space and.
Speaker 2: So one of those sort of sectors. Because I know
Speaker 2: I was talking to a startup in Germany. They did
Speaker 2: fusion right, they do sort of fusion right, and so
Speaker 2: what they had is their German company, they had all
Speaker 2: the research out of Munich. They're very sort of well
Speaker 2: equipped on the science. But then Colorado, the state of Colorado,
Speaker 2: came and gave them a grant for two hundred million
Speaker 2: dollars and they went to go build a lab in
Speaker 2: the United States. And this is one of the sort
Speaker 2: of things that Mario Dragi brought up, is that many
Speaker 2: of the unicorns within europe eventure really leave Europe. How
Speaker 2: do you solve that problem? How do you keep European
Speaker 2: innovation European.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a really important part. As I said,
Speaker 1: truth Europe, it's the third peer of truth. Europe is
Speaker 1: accelerating innovation. We are excellent in really starting in research
Speaker 1: and the startups. Actually Europe creates most startups compared to
Speaker 1: the United States and China. Uh. But yeah, we have problems,
Speaker 1: strug says in the scale phase. So there is not
Speaker 1: big pan European vices yet.
Speaker 3: But we're improving.
Speaker 1: Actually, if you see the data is about the vices
Speaker 1: in Europe in the last couple of years. Actually they
Speaker 1: are we're improving the more investment in vcs.
Speaker 3: What we work is a startup scales strategy. I'm very focused.
Speaker 1: Actually I'm the first startup commissioner every in the history.
Speaker 1: We are focusing on the startup scales strategy with the
Speaker 1: four Peers, like talent always talent.
Speaker 3: Talent.
Speaker 1: Talent is important for innovation. Those are the three t's
Speaker 1: a tee of innovation, the finance, which is how to
Speaker 1: create a big funds enough together with a private sector
Speaker 1: because public I think will be never enough. And access
Speaker 1: to market which is crucial, which means like fast access
Speaker 1: to the market, which means also public procurement, which we
Speaker 1: have on top potential there.
Speaker 3: And then we have regulatory.
Speaker 1: Obstacles and of course access to infrastructure, which is also
Speaker 1: very important for innovators.
Speaker 2: And then you talk about the three t's in terms
Speaker 2: of talent, there is potentially a great thing.
Speaker 3: This is the biggest strength of Europe actually.
Speaker 2: Right, well, there's potentially a bigger pool for the Europeans
Speaker 2: to tap in the United States, where you've seen a
Speaker 2: lot of research, for example, being cut to certain institutions
Speaker 2: within the US. What kind of opportunity does that provide
Speaker 2: to the United too, I would say to the European Union,
Speaker 2: you know the potential brain drain from the United States.
Speaker 2: Are you looking to capitalize on that other ways in
Speaker 2: which you can tap into that talent pool that maybe looking.
Speaker 1: For To be honest, yes, it's a big opportunity for Europe.
Speaker 1: I think what happened. What happens is there is chance
Speaker 1: for Europe because you know that finance have been stopped
Speaker 1: for researching health in vaccination for example, vaccines in science
Speaker 1: link with the climate change some social science perspective. So
Speaker 1: it's a big chance for Europe to attract some of
Speaker 1: the best researchers and scientists from the United States to
Speaker 1: come and work with their colleagues Europeans. And that's why
Speaker 1: European research cons all these grunts that we provide. It
Speaker 1: is an excellent chance for them to move here with
Speaker 1: their teams.
Speaker 2: And you get a sense that that process is a
Speaker 2: little bit underway. Are you hearing from people? Is there
Speaker 2: some kind I.
Speaker 1: Have information from European universities that there is a big
Speaker 1: interest from their collicues from the United States and they're
Speaker 1: looking for how eventually they can revocate and move here.
Speaker 2: And one of the issues I think also in the
Speaker 2: United States versus Europe is that they also pay a
Speaker 2: lot better in the United States. How do you how
Speaker 2: do you solve this in terms of the private sector.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Did some maybe some university they pay more, but not
Speaker 1: always is about the money only if you are not
Speaker 1: allowed to read to research.
Speaker 3: Money doesn't matter that much because you actually have to
Speaker 3: stop your project high prices.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's really freedom, it's matters, social condition matters.
Speaker 1: That's why I always start with the first actually pure
Speaker 1: trues Europe is that for Europe, science matter. For Europe,
Speaker 1: science has to remain open, independent, and scientists have to
Speaker 1: have a freedom for research.
Speaker 2: And I think that another thing that I've observed in
Speaker 2: Europe is that you also have a lot of very
Speaker 2: sort of impressive academic institutions, a lot of impressive research,
Speaker 2: huge amounts of research, but you don't see that translate
Speaker 2: as often into the private sector, I think, as you
Speaker 2: do in the United States. How do you get things
Speaker 2: to move from the sort of sheerly academic research into
Speaker 2: something that can be product terrivity driven, profit driven and
Speaker 2: reallygious companies to Within Europe.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, we have these.
Speaker 1: I would say challenges that not very often the really
Speaker 1: excellent universities and research organization are working with the private sector.
Speaker 3: But we have more and more who do this.
Speaker 1: And for example, I'm going I'm going to mention again Horizon,
Speaker 1: which is actually almost half of the funds from Horizon
Speaker 1: Europe it's a cooperative research which means academia and private sector,
Speaker 1: traditional industries and public institutions work together to find solution
Speaker 1: global challenges. So we have really huge progress in that
Speaker 1: direction as well. So it's a big part of our program.
Speaker 1: But it's not only the European funds. I see more
Speaker 1: and more research organization who work very close with the
Speaker 1: private companies. I also meet a lot of traditional big
Speaker 1: organization of traditional European industry strong industries and they also
Speaker 1: want to invest and work together. They also also want
Speaker 1: to invest in the European startups. They also want to
Speaker 1: invest in European research organizations.
Speaker 3: So we are moving in the right direction.
Speaker 1: One of the seconds we have the instruments actually, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, is Horizon Europe program, but we also Digital
Speaker 1: Europe and other partnership together academia and private sector.
Speaker 2: And one of the industries that is attracting a huge
Speaker 2: volume of capital within Europe is the defense sector. I
Speaker 2: wonder if there is some kind of partnership availab because
Speaker 2: obviously a lot of innovation does sometimes you know, come
Speaker 2: from the defense sector into other applications. There are ways
Speaker 2: in which these two can work together as.
Speaker 1: A definitely definitely and they should work together.
Speaker 2: Some of these ones would be restricted away from.
Speaker 1: The Horizon as Horizon for example, Horizon Europe is only
Speaker 1: civilian research. But in European Innovation Council, this is one
Speaker 1: of the pewers of Horizon Europe, which is innovation focused
Speaker 1: on innovation and the startups UH and the European Innovation
Speaker 1: Council Accelerator. We did propose this is the first omnibles
Speaker 1: of defense to open it for door use and defense research.
Speaker 1: And the same is like a step which is an
Speaker 1: investment in equity in startups.
Speaker 3: Of strategic interests.
Speaker 1: We want to open also for do oils and defense
Speaker 1: because in the modern research so everything can have a
Speaker 1: due application civilian and research.
Speaker 3: I think it's a huge potential.
Speaker 2: Yes, and so if we speak a year from now,
Speaker 2: what is going to be your sort of metrics of
Speaker 2: success in terms of having launched successfully and kind of
Speaker 2: what would you like to see happen a year from now, from.
Speaker 3: Here from now, okay, UH Europe.
Speaker 1: To preserve his first place of attracting talents to be
Speaker 1: actually the continent, the best educated continent. We have UH
Speaker 1: one fourth of the global researchers actually in European Union,
Speaker 1: living and working in European Union, and even to attract
Speaker 1: more and more.
Speaker 3: But my goal is really to.
Speaker 1: Really to shorten, to shorten the period from them discovery
Speaker 1: to the market to be really easy if you are
Speaker 1: no mata, innovative or a well established or young company,
Speaker 1: if you want to expand in other and other member states,
Speaker 1: to happen really easily. So this is I think the
Speaker 1: metrics of sex to happen in less than one year
Speaker 1: to be able to operate in a big single market.