|
 |
|
Matthew Vella
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi announced on Thursday that public investments in R&I will be leveraged up to 0.75% of GDP by 2010, in his address to the national launch of the EU’s FP7 programme for research, technological development and demonstration.
Last week marked the national launch of the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration during a conference organised by the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST) at the Portomaso Suite, Hilton Malta.
The Conference was opened by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, followed by Godwin Grima, Principal Permanent Secretary and MCST advisory board chairman.
David Spiteri Gingell, chairman MCST, chaired the event and introduced to the floor Dr Zoran Stancic, Deputy Director-General DG Research of the European Commission, who gave a detailed speech on the European Research Policy and Dr Leonidas Karapiperis, Advisor DG Research, who delivered a comprehensive overview of FP7.
“Our resource constraints have led us to allocate a relatively high proportion of our structural funds in 2007-2013 for research, innovation and higher education, invest our efforts in more demand-side R&I measures including public procurement and better regulation. We are also in the process of introducing new legislation to encourage inward researcher mobility. We trust that these efforts to strengthen our national R&I system will put our researchers in a stronger position to participate in the Framework Programme,” Gonzi said.
FP7 marks a major step forward in the Union’s efforts to strengthen the drive towards achieving the European Research Area. The joined-up R&I governance approach is reflected in Malta’s National Strategic Framework for R&I (2007-2010), entitled ‘Building and Sustaining the R&I Enabling Framework’ which projects a vision for ‘Research and Innovation at the heart of the Maltese economy to support value-added growth and wealth’.
Lawrence Gonzi said Malta is keen to contribute towards the current drive to re-launch the European Research Area initiative. “In this respect, we note that the re-launch of the ERA takes account of the different and highly dynamic contexts and realities of different Member States and the specific R&I needs of small countries. The new ERA could allow more space for developing customised jointly agreed approaches, appropriate intermediate and realistic targets and also provide a package of support in relation to this through Framework Programmes and other instruments.”
Gonzi said that since EU membership, Malta has been in “fast catch-up mode” in the area of research and innovation and has made strong efforts in recent years to strengthen the R&I governance and institutions and boost public funding as well as leverage private sector funding.
“Our current R&I drive is obviously shaped by the realities of our situation, namely the lack of critical mass and our dependence on international collaboration in science and technology. This has led us to focus more on business-oriented and industry-driven R&I. A comprehensive package of measures is proposed in the National Strategic Framework for R&I involving both demand-side and supply-side approaches, focused on four key priority sectors: ICT, energy and the environment, value-added manufacturing and health/biotechnology.”
The National Strategic Framework for R&I marks an important milestone as the first long-term R&I strategy which focuses investments on a defined set of priorities and targets together with key performance indicators for the human capital base in science, engineering and technology, industry-academia collaboration, current and future R&I capacity and growth and wealth creation.
The international dimension is strongly emphasized with the setting up of an institutional framework to take the European-Mediterranean R&I concept forward. The development of the EuroMediti initiative can be seen as a means for generating sufficient critical mass for R&I and North-South technology transfer, by addressing a Euro-Mediterranean market. This initiative is currently focusing its efforts on engaging the public and private sector players in R&I in Europe and the Mediterranean in the development of a technology and innovation platform for Euromed business-driven services.
“The new FP7 programme opens up some very exciting prospects for our researchers in the public and private sectors and marks new challenges for Malta to extend and further improve its participation, both quantitatively and more importantly qualitatively in FP7,” Gonzi said. “Malta’s record of participation in the Framework Programme is impressive given our small size, limited past investments in this sector and lack of critical mass. Our drive in FP7 is to ensure a more effective and qualitative participation especially by SMEs, in line with our national R&I Plan priorities.”
[email protected] |
