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00:00Katarina Zejarevia, you're the EU Commissioner for Innovation, Startups and Research.
00:04Thank you so much for joining us on Bloomberg today.
00:06You've just released this Choose Europe plan.
00:08This is going to flesh out the strategy to boost research within Europe.
00:12There's half a billion dollars at stake here.
00:14Talk us through a little bit of the strategy and what you're trying to achieve here.
00:18The strategy is very simple.
00:20It's first, Europe always choose science.
00:24And so we want science to choose Europe.
00:27So that means that for Europe, science should remain open and independent.
00:34And we respect the scientific freedom.
00:37This is the first, so to say, pillar of this strategy.
00:41And the second is, of course, investing in talent.
00:45And the third is like accelerate and boost innovation.
00:52So those are the three focuses on this Choose Europe for science, Choose Europe for business, I would say.
00:59And so when you think about sort of half a billion dollars being deployed to that end,
01:02how is that money sort of productively spent in order to achieve those ends?
01:06So this is the half a billion for the next two and a half years until the end of this programming period.
01:13The biggest actually program for research and innovation in the world, which is Horizon Europe program.
01:20That means that we want to focus, of course, on the early career researchers.
01:25We actually work on the pilot Choose Europe for science for the early career researchers.
01:33And then we have European Research Council, in which Council the scientists decide the priorities, the cause and choose the projects.
01:43Absolutely autonomous and independent of the politicians.
01:47And so we want to deploy extra 220 million for the next, actually 280 million almost for the extra support for researchers,
02:04which is Research Council is more focused on really the best researchers with their teams in the world.
02:12And you say it's sort of value neutral in terms of what the science is investigating, but there certainly are objectives within the European Union
02:18to try to boost certain sectors and innovate and things like that.
02:20So what sectors are you trying to get, sort of attract more of those researchers and scientists in order to give Europe that competitive edge?
02:27You know, European Research Council, I want to say it, but of course I'm going to talk about the sectors later.
02:32European Research Council, it's really bottom up driven.
02:37It's not so it's open for everybody.
02:42I mean, it's curiosity driven projects.
02:45So this is actually the fundamental, the basic research without which we cannot have excellent innovation and breakthrough technologies.
02:55So this is the for the European Research Council.
02:58But of course, the sectors who have really common European interests are really important for European competitiveness, European economic security.
03:08It's like more or less, I'm not going to surprise nobody's AI, of course, life sciences, it's bioeconomy, it's clean tech.
03:20So those are sectors, quantum, which one we are focused on, European Innovation Council, and space.
03:28And so one of those sort of sectors, because I know I was talking to a startup in Germany, they did fusion, right?
03:33They do sort of nuclear fusion, right?
03:34Fusion everything, yeah.
03:35And so what they had is their German company, they had all the research out of Munich.
03:39They're very sort of well equipped on the science.
03:41But then Colorado, the state of Colorado came and gave them a grant for 200 million dollars and they went to go build the lab in the United States.
03:47And this is one of the sort of things that Mario Draghi brought up, is that many of the unicorns within Europe eventually leave Europe.
03:53How do you solve that problem?
03:54How do you keep European innovation European?
03:56Yeah, this is a really important part.
03:58As I said, Choose Europe, the third pillar of Choose Europe is accelerating innovation.
04:04We are excellent in really starting in research and the startups.
04:08Actually, Europe creates more startups compared to the United States and China.
04:12But yeah, we have problems, as Draghi says, in the scale-up phase.
04:17So there's not big pan-European VCs yet.
04:21But we're improving actually.
04:23If you see the data about the VCs in Europe in the last couple of years, actually we're improving.
04:31There are more investment in VCs.
04:33What we work is a startup and scale strategy.
04:36I'm very focused actually on the first startup commissioner ever in the history.
04:41We are focusing on the startup and scale strategy with the four pillars like talent, always talent, talent, talent is important for innovation.
04:48Those are the three T's, a T of innovation.
04:53The finance, which is how to create a big funds enough together with the private sector, because public funding will be never enough.
05:05And access to market, which is crucial, which means like fast access to the market, which means also public procurement, which we have on top potential there.
05:19And then we have regulatory obstacles and, of course, access to infrastructure, which is also very important for innovators.
05:26And then you talk about the three T's in terms of talent.
05:29There is potentially a great pool.
05:30This is the biggest strength of Europe, actually.
05:32Right.
05:33Well, there's potentially a bigger pool for the Europeans to tap in the United States, where you've seen a lot of research, for example, being cut to certain institutions within the U.S.
05:40What kind of opportunity does that provide to the European Union, you know, the potential brain drain from the United States?
05:47Are you looking to capitalize on that?
05:49Are there ways in which you can tap into that talent pool that may be looking for...
05:52I'll be honest, yes.
05:53It's a big opportunity for Europe.
05:55I think what happens is there is a chance for Europe because you know that finance have been stopped for research in health, in vaccination, for example, vaccines, in science linked with climate change, some social science perspective.
06:14So it's a big chance for Europe to attract some of the best researchers and scientists from the United States to come and work with their colleagues here, Europeans.
06:24And that's why the European Research Council, these grants that we provide, it's an excellent chance for them to move here with their teams.
06:31And do you get a sense that that process is a little bit underway?
06:33Are you hearing from people?
06:34Is there some kind of...
06:35Yeah.
06:36I have information from European universities that there is a big interest from their colleagues from the United States and they are looking for how eventually they can relocate and move here.
06:48And then one of the issues I think also in the United States versus Europe is that they also pay a lot better in the United States.
06:53How do you solve this in terms of the private sector?
06:55I don't know.
06:56In some, maybe some investors, they pay more, but not always it's about the money only.
07:04If you are not allowed to research, money doesn't matter that much because you actually have to stop your project.
07:14Right.
07:15Highest prices for Europe.
07:16Yeah.
07:17So it's really freedom.
07:18It matters.
07:19Social condition matters.
07:21That's why I always start with the first actually pure of Choose Europe is that for Europe, science matters.
07:29For Europe, science has to remain open, independent and scientists have to have a freedom for research.
07:35And I think that another thing that I've observed in Europe is that you also have a lot of very sort of impressive academic institutions, a lot of impressive research, huge amounts of research.
07:44But you don't see that translate as often into the private sector, I think, as you do in the United States.
07:49How do you get things to move from just sort of sheerly academic research into something that it can be productivity driven, profit driven and really just companies within Europe?
07:58You know, yeah, we have this, I would say, challenges that not very often the really excellent universities and research organizations are working with the private sector, but we have more and more who do this.
08:15And for example, I'm going to mention again Horizon, which is actually almost half of the funds from Horizon Europe.
08:23It's a cooperative research, which means academia and private sector, traditional industries and public institutions work together to find solutions to the global challenges.
08:35So we have really a huge progress in that direction as well.
08:39So it's a big part of our program.
08:41But it's not only the European funds.
08:43I see more and more research organizations who are very close with the private companies.
08:50I also meet a lot of traditional, big organization of traditional European industries, strong industries.
08:57And they also want to invest and work together.
09:00They also want to invest in the European startups.
09:02They also want to invest in European research organizations.
09:05So we are moving in the right direction.
09:07And one of the sectors that's…
09:08But we have the instruments actually.
09:09As I mentioned, it's Horizon Europe program, but we have also Digital Europe and other partnerships together, academia and private sector.
09:17And one of the industries that is attracting a huge volume of capital within Europe is the defense sector.
09:23I wonder if there is some kind of partnership available.
09:25Because obviously a lot of innovation does sometimes, you know, come from the defense sector into other applications.
09:30True.
09:31Are there ways in which these two can work together?
09:33Yeah.
09:34Definitely.
09:35Definitely.
09:36And they should work together.
09:37Because for a long time, you know, some of these funds would be restricted away from defense.
09:40As Horizon, as Horizon, for example, Horizon Europe is only civilian research.
09:45But in European Innovation Council, this is one of the purest of Horizon Europe, which is innovation, focus on innovation, on the startups.
09:55And the European Innovation Council accelerator, we did propose, this is the first omnibus of defense, to open it for the oil use and defense research.
10:07And the same is like a step, which is investment in equity in startups of strategic interests.
10:15We want to open also for dual use and defense.
10:18Because in the modern research, almost everything can have a dual application, both civilian and research.
10:27I think it's a huge potential, yes.
10:29And so if we speak a year from now, what is going to be your sort of metrics of success in terms of having launched this successfully?
10:34And kind of what would you like to see happen a year from now?
10:37A year from now?
10:39Yeah.
10:40Okay.
10:41Europe to preserve his first place of attracting talents, to be actually the continent, the best educated continent.
10:51We have one fourth of the global researchers actually in European Union, living and working in European Union, and even to attract more and more.
11:01But my goal is really to shorten the period from the discovery to the market.
11:11To be really easy if you are no matter innovative or well established or young company, if you want to expand in other member states to happen really easily.
11:21So this is, I think, the metrics of success to happen in less than one year, to be able to operate in our big single market.
11:28So, how do you make projects and talent because the model has some key functions to allow us to have the modern businesses to be able to 처음HHSING liebe its initial clients?
11:29Yeah.
11:30So pleaseывают these classic advice on the cross-եմin card.
11:31How do you options share a single market?
11:34There are many other factors around us doing these products.
11:36For example, it's called single market.
11:36Number 1.
11:38partieん
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