Research nation: whisper it, Europe still sometimes looks to the UK

Getting into a taxi with a stranger at 11pm could have been an awkward experience. Especially when the journey ahead was due to take one-and-a-half hours. Fortunately, when I arrived at Pisa airport last week and jumped into a car to be driven to Siena by Riccardo Chiantini, sitting next to me was Raja Chakir, a researcher in environmental economics at Paris Saclay University and a director of research at INRAE, France’s national research institute for agriculture, food and environment.

Inevitably, once we’d got beyond, “how was your flight? I hear you were delayed”, we quickly arrived at “so, what do you do and why does it bring you to a conference of the future of Europe?”. Fortunately, The Conversation provided instant common ground. Raja is a reader, but also a very content contributor. Just a couple of months ago, she published this article with colleagues from INRAE and one of our French environment editors, Gabrielle Maréchaux.

Not only had the creation of the piece (on climate change and pesticide use in France) with Gabrielle been an extremely positive experience, but it had led to further media interest in the research team’s project, including a Q&A with the national newspaper Liberation.

So, as starts to conferences go, it was pretty good to say the least. Raja and I were both heading to the Siena Conference on the Future of Europe, hosted by the think tank Vision, along with the European University Institute and the University of Siena, and the Institute for European Policy Making at Bocconi University (a Conversation member).

The event was hosted in the city and at the nearby Certosa di Pontignano and brought together leading policy makers, academics and political groups from across the continent. There was much to chew on, in particular, a report delivered earlier in the week by Mario Draghi on European competitiveness (or lack thereof).

The Draghi report set the tone for the conference, with concerns being voiced regarding how Europe can meet the challenges it faces on fronts such as security, technological development and the environment. I was in attendance as we hope to work with Vision, and it’s engaging manager Francesco Grillo, a political economist, on a future project (watch this space!). But I also found myself drafted in to chair a panel that formed part of the conference’s core mode of operation – the creation of a Concept Paper which aims to generate fresh and pragmatic ideas for the development of the EU.

Now you might reasonably think at this point, hang on, he’s in the UK – what do they have to do with the EU any more? But it was clear in Siena that the group seeks and values perspectives and research from across academia, and particularly from the UK institutions we work with. It stuck me that whether it’s in the Draghi report, or in wider discussion, there’s little mention of the UK, but there’s no doubt it is on people’s minds.

Indeed, the leader of the session I chaired, on enhancing European democracy, Sabrina Cavatorto, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Siena, shared insightful thoughts on some of the outcomes of the UK’s departure from the bloc. In particular, she spoke of how UK research had a rich tradition of engaging with policy makers and informing policy in a way she felt was sometimes lacking on the continent. It was her hope that in the post-Brexit era some of those relationships and practices could be revived.

Elsewhere there were lively discussions across the policy fields of security, growth and environment and co-operation in the Mediterranean. This latter theme even saw two-time Italian PM and former European Commission President talk in depth about his plan to establish a multi-campus “Mediterranean University” to drive the training of a new generation of high-tech workers in southern Europe, north Africa and the Middle East.

From reaching back across the English Channel and the Atlantic in the north, and around the Mediterranean in the south it is clear that solutions to European challenges will need to engage with academic partners beyond the European Union. That seems likely to present more opportunities to the research powerhouses of the UK. After almost of decade of uncertainly and awkwardness, perhaps, with a return to Horizon 2020 and amid a deep sense of the need for growth, security and innovation, UK and European research might be afforded more ways to work closely together again.