Ekaterina Zaharieva Talks EU Investment into Research

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Catharine Savia, you're the EU Commission for Innovation, Startups and Research. Thank you so much for joining us on Bloomberg today. You've just released this Choose Europe plan. This is going to flesh out the strategy to boost research within Europe. There's half a billion dollars at stake. Care tuk us through a little bit of the strategy in what you're trying to achieve here.

The strategy is very simple. It's first Europe always to science, and so we want science to choose Europe. So that's mean that for Europe science should remain open and independent and we respect scientific freedom. This is the first, so to say Pewer, of the strategy, and the second is of course investing in talent, and the third is like accelerate and boost the innovation. So those are the three focuses on this Choose Europe for Science for business, I would say.

And so when you think about sort of half a billion dollars being deployed to that end, how does that money sort of productively spent in order to achieve those ends?

So this is the half a billion for the next two and a half years until the end of this programming period of the biggest actually program for research and innovation in the world, which.

Is Horizon euro Program.

That's mean that we want to focus, of course on the early career researchers. We actually work on the pile choose Europe for Science for the early career researchers, and then we have European Research Council, in which council the scientists decide the priorities, the calls and choose the projects, absolutely autonomous and independent of the politicians. And we want to deploy extra to hundred and twenty million for the actually two hundred and eighty million almost for the extra

Really the best researchers with their teams in the world.

And 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 to try to boost certain sectors and innovate and things like that. So what sectors are you trying to get attract more of those researches and scientists in order to give your that competitive edge.

You know, you open research couns, so I want to say it, but of course I'm going to talk about the sectors later. The Eupan Research Council, it's really bottom up driven. It's not so it's open for everybody. I mean, it's curiosity driven projects. So this is actually the fundamental, the basic research without which we can not he have excellent innovasion and breakthrough technologies. So this is the for

So one of those sort of sectors. Because I know I was talking to a startup in Germany. They did fusion right, they do sort of fusion right, and so what they had is their German company, they had all the research out of Munich. They're very sort of well equipped on the science. But then Colorado, the state of Colorado, came and gave them a grant for two hundred million dollars and they went to go build a lab in

Yeah, this is a really important part. As I said, truth Europe, it's the third peer of truth. Europe is accelerating innovation. We are excellent in really starting in research and the startups. Actually Europe creates most startups compared to the United States and China. Uh. But yeah, we have problems, strug says in the scale phase. So there is not big pan European vices yet.

But we're improving.

Actually, if you see the data is about the vices in Europe in the last couple of years. Actually they are we're improving the more investment in vcs.

What we work is a startup scales strategy. I'm very focused.

Actually I'm the first startup commissioner every in the history. We are focusing on the startup scales strategy with the four Peers, like talent always talent.

Talent.

Talent is important for innovation. Those are the three t's a tee of innovation, the finance, which is how to create a big funds enough together with a private sector because public I think will be never enough. And 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.

And then we have regulatory.

Obstacles and of course access to infrastructure, which is also very important for innovators.

And then you talk about the three t's in terms of talent, there is potentially a great thing.

This is the biggest strength of Europe actually.

Right, well, 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 US. What kind of opportunity does that provide to the United too, I would say to the European Union, you know the potential brain drain from the United States. Are you looking to capitalize on that other ways in which you can tap into that talent pool that maybe looking.

For To be honest, yes, it's a big opportunity for Europe. I think what happened. What happens is there is chance for Europe because you know that finance have been stopped for researching health in vaccination for example, vaccines in science link with the climate change some social science perspective. So 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 Europeans. And that's why

And you get a sense that that process is a little bit underway. Are you hearing from people? Is there some kind I.

Have information from European universities that there is a big interest from their collicues from the United States and they're looking for how eventually they can revocate and move here.

And 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. How do you how do you solve this in terms of the private sector.

I don't know.

Did some maybe some university they pay more, but not always is about the money only if you are not allowed to read to research.

Money doesn't matter that much because you actually have to stop your project high prices.

Yeah, so it's really freedom, it's matters, social condition matters. That's why I always start with the first actually pure trues Europe is that for Europe, science matter. For Europe, science has to remain open, independent, and scientists have to have a freedom for research.

And 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, but you don't see that translate as often into the private sector, I think, as you do in the United States. How do you get things to move from the sort of sheerly academic research into something that can be product terrivity driven, profit driven and reallygious companies to Within Europe.

You know, Yeah, we have these.

I would say challenges that not very often the really excellent universities and research organization are working with the private sector.

But we have more and more who do this.

And for example, I'm going I'm going to mention again Horizon, which is actually almost half of the funds from Horizon Europe it's a cooperative research which means academia and private sector, traditional industries and public institutions work together to find solution global challenges. So we have really huge progress in that direction as well. So it's a big part of our program. But it's not only the European funds. I see more and more research organization who work very close with the

So we are moving in the right direction.

One of the seconds we have the instruments actually, as I mentioned, is Horizon Europe program, but we also Digital Europe and other partnership together academia and private sector.

And one of the industries that is attracting a huge volume of capital within Europe is the defense sector. I wonder if there is some kind of partnership availab because obviously a lot of innovation does sometimes you know, come from the defense sector into other applications. There are ways in which these two can work together as.

A definitely definitely and they should work together.

Some of these ones would be restricted away from.

The Horizon as Horizon for example, Horizon Europe is only civilian research. But in European Innovation Council, this is one of the pewers of Horizon Europe, which is innovation focused on innovation and the startups UH and the European Innovation Council Accelerator. We did propose this is the first omnibles of defense to open it for door use and defense research. And the same is like a step which is an investment in equity in startups.

Of strategic interests.

We want to open also for do oils and defense because in the modern research so everything can have a due application civilian and research.

I think it's a huge potential.

Yes, and so if we speak a year from now, what is going to be your sort of metrics of success in terms of having launched successfully and kind of what would you like to see happen a year from now, from.

Here from now, okay, UH Europe.

To preserve his first place of attracting talents to be actually the continent, the best educated continent. We have UH one fourth of the global researchers actually in European Union, living and working in European Union, and even to attract more and more.

But my goal is really to.

Really to shorten, to shorten the period from them discovery to the market to be really easy if you are no mata, innovative or a well established or young company, if you want to expand in other and other member states, to happen really easily. So this is I think the metrics of sex to happen in less than one year to be able to operate in a big single market.