Hosted by Bratislava during the Slovak EU presidency, the ministerial conference was opened by Peter Plavčan, Minister of Education, Science, Research and Sport of Slovakia, followed by the COST President Angeles Rodríguez Peña’s presentation on the organisation’s vision and strategic goals. The event was also attended and addressed by Robert-Jan Smits, Director General for Research, Science and Innovation of the European Commission. The Hungarian standpoint was represented by József Pálinkás: “My conviction is that participating in COST is a long-term investment which contributes to embedding the Hungarian research community into the international science and technology networks. COST should continue to play an important role in the European Research Area and should maintain its open, inclusive and bottom-up nature.”
How can integration and diversity be key drivers to foster an open and competitive European R&D? How to ensure smart, complementary and sustainable investments in R&D at national and European scales? How to improve the synergies and outcomes of the use of the structural funds? How to support national and European research facilities to ensure a better return on public R&D investments? These key concerns were discussed over the round table and debate as being vital to Europe’s scientific competitiveness and COST contributing to that. „Inclusiveness, one of the key characteristics of COST, can’t be imagined without Open Science and Open Access: these boost scientific research, facilitate interdisciplinary cooperation, and support faster dissemination of scientific results” put József Pálinkás in a comment. For similar reasons we welcome COST getting involved in the „Widening Participation” actions of the Horizon 2020 framework programme. The President of the NRDI Office also shared Hungary’s specific practice of programming: “In order to create and exploit synergies we have designed a complex portfolio of calls to efficiently use the means from the structural funds and domestic RDI resources, ensuring a healthy balance in financing while supporting research and innovation in a systematic approach.”
As a formal outcome of the meeting, the participants adopted a Ministerial Declaration. The document highlights the organisation’s background, achievements and state of play, outlines recent challenges and strategic objectives and also the commitments deemed necessary for the organization to ensure its role within the European Research Area.
COST – European Cooperation in Science and Technology
As an intergovernmental organisation, COST has played a major role in European knowledge economy for the last 45 years. With 36 Member States across the European continent, it funds researchers’ mobility and knowledge exchange, interlinks nationally funded researchers and innovators, regardless of disciplines. In all, nearly half a million researchers have participated in COST over the years. COST Actions fund conferences, workshops, short-term scientific missions, training schools, publications and other communications tools to network the participants together. As of 2016, there are more than 300 different COST Actions going on, involving about 45,000 researchers. COST Actions also contribute to diversity in science: about 30% of participants are young researchers. Half the Actions include industry, large or small.
Further information: COST general informations