Focus on frontier research with the ERC
Dear Prof. Konarzewski, dear Vice Minister Szeptycki, dear Leszek, ladies and gentlemen.
I am very pleased to be in Warsaw today here at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Introduction
Before I speak about the topic of our conference, let me first express my sympathy for those affected by the floods in south-western Poland.
I will speak today about the role of the European Research Council in the European research system and about how to strengthen excellence at the national level.
I know that there are many of you who feel that researchers based in Poland and at the Polish Academy of Sciences institutes do not get their fair share of ERC grants, and I will address that.
But the main point of my speech today is to try to persuade you that Poland now faces a clear choice.
Over the past several decades, Poland has emerged as a standout economic performer. The question is: how can Poland continue this success in a world of increasing geopolitical uncertainty?
In short, I believe that by investing in the research system today, Poland can build a research system that positions the country as a future leader in innovation and technological development. This will help set the country up for the next several decades.
The Critical Role of Frontier Research
As you know, the ERC supports excellent scientists from anywhere in the world, of any age and from any field of research - including the social sciences and humanities. There are no predetermined targets or quotas. The only conditions are that ERC-funded researchers must be based in Europe and willing to conduct groundbreaking and ambitious frontier research projects.
Frontier research is research that pushes the limits of our understanding. It is typically driven by scientific curiosity and the desire to explore unanswered questions. Unlike applied research, which aims to develop specific technologies or solve immediate problems, frontier research is foundational. It may not yield results for years, or even decades, but when it does, the impacts can be transformative.
ERC-funded projects have led to unexpected discoveries and innovations, from advances in quantum computing to new approaches to treating diseases. These projects were not confined by predetermined outcomes, and it is that freedom to explore is that makes them so valuable.
I understand that frontier research can seem intangible at times, especially when politicians and policymakers are under pressure to deliver results in the short term. But history has shown us that the most revolutionary ideas and technologies often emerge from long-term investments in basic research.
Consider the development of optical fibres, which now form the backbone of the global internet. The economic impact of this technology is incalculable, yet it began as a speculative exploration into new materials. Similarly, the rapid development of mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 was built on decades of basic research in molecular biology.
These cases underscore the non-linear, often unpredictable nature of scientific progress. But they also illustrate the profound economic benefits that arise from patient investment in science.
And because of past investment, we are constantly able to reap the benefits of frontier research in the present.
A great example of this is the winner of the European Patent Office’s 2024 Inventor of the Year Award, the Polish scientist Olga Malinkiewicz. Malinkiewicz co-founded Saule Technologies headquartered in Poland in 2014. The company specialises in printable perovskite solar cells as a lightweight and flexible method of harnessing solar energy.
She now supervises a team of 60 scientists and engineers as they unlock new avenues for perovskite solar cell production and the firm has signed licenses with industry leaders including Sweden’s Skanska, to sell and distribute their solutions.
An important fact is that Olga was inspired to work with perovskite solar cells following a breakthrough achieved in 2012 by Henry Snaith, an ERC grantee at the University of Oxford.
A New Path for Europe?
Examples like this and many others are why one of my major aims as the President of the European Research Council has always been to fight for sufficient funding for frontier research.
And fortunately in recent months it seems that the political leadership in Brussels has come to recognise this key role of frontier research.
In July this summer, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who was elected for a second mandate, presented to the European Parliament her Political Guidelines for the next European Commission for 2024-2029.
In her guidelines she promises to put research and innovation at the heart of the EU economy: 'Europe’s competitiveness – and its position in the race to a clean and digital economy – will depend on starting a new age of invention and ingenuity. This requires putting research and innovation, science and technology, at the centre of our economy. We will increase our research spending to focus more on strategic priorities, on groundbreaking fundamental research and disruptive innovation, and on scientific excellence. To do this, we will expand the European Research Council and the European Innovation Council.'
This was followed up on 8 September with the publication of the widely anticipated report of former European Central Bank President, Mario Draghi. In this report on the future of European competitiveness, Draghi paints a picture of a continent which is specialised in the industries of the last century and is struggling to find its place and adapt to the new century. He notes that 'Europe is stuck in a static industrial structure with few new companies rising up to disrupt existing industries or develop new growth engines.'
His report identifies three main areas for action to reignite sustainable growth. First – and in his words, most importantly – Europe must profoundly refocus its collective efforts on closing the innovation gap with the US and China, especially in advanced technologies.
The Draghi report goes on to identify a series of recommendations on how to do this. And, by the way, I highly recommend reading the full analysis and recommendations of the report. But one of these is to double the support to ground-breaking fundamental research through the European Research Council. The report states that:
- the ERC has become essential to the competitiveness of European science;
- the ERC’s sound reputation is built on a focus on excellence, independent decision-making and a rigorous, impartial evaluation system; and
- currently, the ERC is not fully realising its potential, as it reaches too few researchers, and many promising proposals remain unfunded owing to a lack of financial resources.
So, I am very happy to say that it seems the voices of the scientific community have been heard. And I can only hope that this report marks a turning point in Europe’s path.
In Draghi’s own words, 'If Europe cannot become more productive, we will be forced to choose. We will not be able to become, at once, a leader in new technologies, a beacon of climate responsibility and an independent player on the world stage. We will not be able to finance our social model. We will have to scale back some, if not all, of our ambitions. This is an existential challenge.'
Frontier Research as a Long-Term Investment
But what about the innovation divide? What about countries or regions that do not receive significant funding from the EU R&I framework programmes or as many ERC grants as they would hope for? Where is the value of expanding the framework programme for those countries?
The Scientific Council of the ERC is very well aware that the scientific community in Poland is concerned about what you consider to be the low number of ERC grants in Poland. As you are aware, several distinguished Polish scientists have served on the Council, including Leszek Kaczmarek (current member), Andrzej Jajszczyk (former Vice President whom we will hear from this afternoon) and Thomas Dietl who are all here with us.
The first thing I want to get out of the way is that I do not believe that the ERC panels are biased against applicants from Poland or anywhere else. I know the ERC very well, having served as a panel member for the Advanced and Synergy Grant calls before becoming President. And I can assure you that in the Scientific Council we spend a lot of our time trying to ensure that the ERC's peer review evaluation process can identify scientific excellence irrespective of the gender, age, nationality, or institution of the Principal Investigator and other potential biases. The latest changes we made to our forms and evaluation processes from the 2024 calls also had this goal in mind. We have always been clear that we want to focus on the quality of the proposals and not the reputation of the applicants or their host institutions.
I hope that you also appreciate the arrangements we have put in place to encourage more applications from countries with lower participation in the ERC programme. These include the ERC Mentoring Scheme and the Visiting Fellowship Programme. You may also have seen that for 2025 we have allocated 1.8 million euros for support to ERC National Contact Points. The aim is to strengthen national and local participation in the ERC programme.
The ERC has awarded 78 Starting, Consolidator and Advanced Grants to researchers based in Poland, at 26 different institutions. The success rate of researchers based in Poland has increased from around 2% under the Seventh Framework Programme starting in 2007 to around 7% now. The ERC has also awarded another 80 grants to researchers of Polish nationality based outside Poland. In the latest Starting Grant call we awarded grants to Piotr Alexandrowicz at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and Lukasz Bola at the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. I don’t think the ERC panels are biased against researchers based in Poland or Polish institutions or Polish researchers.
So what is going on?
In 2022, the European Court of Auditors issued its special report on widening participation to the EU framework programmes. They concluded that the crucial factor determining a country’s performance is its national R&I investment levels and reforms.
The framework programmes represent only around 10% of the total public spending on research and innovation in the EU. Hence, it is clear that funding coming from the EU cannot replace national funding.
Poland, like other countries, is at a critical juncture. By investing in the research system today, the country can build a research ecosystem that positions it as a future leader in innovation and technological development.
But this requires patience and a willingness to invest in projects that may not yield immediate returns. We must recognise that those countries that now enjoy good conditions for research and innovation do so only because of wise investment over many years. That is why developing a strong science base cannot be the project of a single minister or ministry. There must be buy-in across government and in the longterm by the scientific community.
The good news is that from 2014 to 2022 Poland has steadily increased its investment in research from less than four billion euros to more than nine billion euros.
But I want to give you some idea of the challenge and the level of competition. Let us take Switzerland, because researchers based there have consistently achieved the highest success rates in the ERC’s calls (when they have been eligible to take part).
In 2021, Switzerland with a population of less than 9 million spent 23 billion euros on R&D. In the same year, all of the 15 widening countries combined spent 30 billion euros (including 8 billion by Poland). So, you can begin to understand how Switzerland manages to fund world class institutions including the ETH in Zürich and the EPFL in Lausanne, how they can afford the best salaries and equipment and facilities and how they can attract some of the best researchers from around Europe and the world.
Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden, none of which are large countries, all spent around 20 billion euros on R&D in 2021. Germany spent 121 billion euros!
Indeed, if we look at the annual budget for just the ETH Zurich it is over 2 billion euros. So ETH Zurich by itself has an annual budget which exceeds the entire R&D expenditure of ten of the widening countries. Of course, ETH Zurich does not only carry out research but this gives some idea of the resources needed to run a world class public research university.
To give another perspective, the number of ERC grants received by researchers based in a given country correlates most closely with the number of highly cited scientific publications which authors in that country have produced. This would be expected from a funding instrument that awards on the basis of scientific excellence. If one looks in aggregate one can see that around 6% of scientific publications with an author based in Poland are in the top 10% most cited publications worldwide, against a EU average of around 9% and half that of publications from the top performing countries such as the Netherlands (14%), Denmark (12%) and Switzerland (13%).
Now these general figures do not tell us anything about any particular individual researcher or the quality of his or her work. But it follows that in order to have a competitive track record with the best researchers in Europe, a researcher based in Poland must be much further above the average for Poland than a Dutch researcher must be above the average for the Netherlands.
Given this context, Poland still has some way to go.
Isn’t this a depressing conclusion? Am I saying that Poland will have to wait years and even decades before benefitting from its research investments?
No, I am not.
The channels by which national research efforts feed into the economy (or make an 'impact') are many and diverse. It is not just about the occasional scientific breakthrough. Research does not have to qualify for an ERC grant to be worthwhile.
Basic research increases the stock of useful knowledge, both the kind which is written down (e.g. scientific publications) and the kind that people carry around in their heads (e.g. skills, knowhow and experience). It trains skilled graduates and researchers in solving complex problems, produces new scientific instruments and methodologies, creates international peer networks for transmitting the latest knowledge and can even raise new questions about societal values and choices. Applied and incremental work are also valuable and necessary.
So you can see that building up your research system delivers benefits as you go along and not only when you reach a certain level.
Most importantly, to keep improving, national policymakers need to create the conditions in which their researchers can flourish. You must consider employment and working conditions, as well as open, transparent and merit-based recruitment. You must strike an appropriate balance between competitive and institutional funding. You must look at ways to enhance the training, skills and experience of your researchers, including spending time abroad. You must consider work-life balance and improve conditions for women in research. You need to consider researchers, not just as researchers, but as people.
And you also need to allow your best researchers the freedom to use their own creativity. Material conditions and career possibilities are important but people go into a scientific career to make a difference and for the intellectual challenge. They value autonomy very highly.
Benefitting from Research and Innovation Carried Out Abroad
Fine, you might say. It is important to build up the national science system, but why should Poland care strongly about the next R&I framework programme or increasing the budget of the ERC?
I want to try to persuade you that it is Poland’s interest for the framework programme to be successful almost regardless of the number of grants Poland receives. And that is because Poland and other countries can benefit from the research investment of other countries and also benefit from having dynamic and growing trading partners.
If you look at many of the so called 'widening countries' you do not see countries mired in stagnation. Far from it. What you see are some of the fastest growing economies in the EU, and indeed the world. Poland has been growing steadily on average at 6% per year for over thirty years with the sole exception of the pandemic year of 2020. This has seen the country's gross domestic product (GDP) grow nearly eightfold. That is a staggering record.
And Poland is not the only success story. The Commission’s latest Cohesion Report states that: 'Twenty years ago the EU welcomed new Member States in its largest enlargement round to date, and over this period, the average GDP per head of the Member States who joined since then has increased from 52% to nearly 80% of the EU average. The gap with the rest of the EU has halved, and unemployment in these Member States has decreased from an average of 13% to 4%.'
So how has this happened, if research and innovation are crucial for economic growth and Poland is what is called an 'emerging innovator' using the terminology of the Commission’s Innovation Scoreboard?
The point is that economies on the technological frontier need new knowledge to grow further. But countries that are still building their economies can enjoy 'catchup growth'. It is possible to reap the benefits of the research and innovation carried out in other countries, especially if those countries are linked in a close economic relationship such as the EU Single Market.
The example I mentioned of Olga Malinkiewicz illustrates many of these points very well. She graduated from the University of Warsaw, carried on with her studies in various institutions in Spain, started to work in the area of perovskite solar cells developed first in Japan and then UK, then set up her company back in Poland.
But more than this, it is in Poland’s national interest that its neighbours and closest trading partners have dynamic and thriving economies. It is vital that some of the older EU countries develop new growth engines, for them and for the EU, including Poland.
For example, the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands is currently the number one institution in the world for quantum computing. Over the years the ERC has funded a number of grants on this topic to researchers based there, and the Dutch government is investing millions of euros to build a quantum campus at the university.
You could say - what has this got to do with Poland? Well, to me this is a European success story. It potentially creates the growth of the future. But it also addresses economic security. Given the current global uncertainty, if and when these technologies mature, Poland will be in a better position to use them if they are developed within the EU Single Market. Otherwise you may end up dependent on technologies coming out of Hefei or San Francisco with no guarantee of their availability.
For these reasons we should celebrate our neighbours’ research and innovation and economic success: these are the conditions for our future growth and success. As the Draghi Report makes clear, it is only by acting together that the EU and its Member States can hope to compete with superpowers like China and the US.
Now some of you might be thinking, if this is true then do we really need to do our own research and innovation in Poland?
And my answer is that yes you do.
Aside from the benefits I have described above, you have to consider how it is possible to capture the benefits of research and innovation carried out elsewhere. In the economic literature they talk about a country needing 'absorptive capacity'. But what that means plainly, is that you need a community that hears about new ideas from abroad, and can understand them and can put them to use. And that is precisely your research community!
Conclusions
So, in conclusion, I agree with Mario Draghi and others that the current European model is struggling and that competition from China and the US presents Europe with an existential challenge. Indeed, the ERC Scientific Council made the same point in our statement on the next EU framework programme FP10 in January this year.
We also agree with Draghi and others that support for ground-breaking fundamental research is one of the key tools we have in our locker to help address this challenge.
It is therefore vital that both at EU and national levels we provide support for research and innovation in a balanced way. We need to think very hard about making sure we have the right balance between funding short-term economic development and long-term economic growth.
Poland’s dynamic, growing economy is already helping to drive the EU economy. And I have no doubt that, sooner than many think, more and more of Poland’s scientists and entrepreneurs will also be helping to drive Europe’s production frontier.
We know that Europe has the talent to be world leading in science and technology. The research community in Europe stands ready and able to make a huge contribution to achieving Europe's ambitions and addressing Europe’s challenges. What we are asking for are the means and the mechanisms to reach those goals.
Let's do that together.
