The ERA Act: unlocking the fifth freedom

Key points

The EESC:

• welcomes the European Commission’s ambition to establish a ‘fifth freedom’– the free movement of research, innovation, and knowledge. The fifth freedom must include mechanisms to counter disinformation and pseudoscience, build trust in scientific institutions, and promote ‘knowledge literacy’. The EESC stresses the need to adopt a balanced approach to trade-offs at the heart of the fifth freedom, such as cohesion vs. excellence, or openness vs. autonomy;
• calls on the Commission to pursue measures and structural incentives, especially in areas where Member State reluctance hampers progress and homogenisation – such as tax, pensions, gender, workplaces, salaries, and the challenges linked to scale-ups of firms and cross-border mobility of people and funds;
• underlines the importance of a 3% GDP national spending goal for R&I (Research & Innovation), asking for an additional 1% for preparedness and dual-use research. To initiate a breakthrough, the EESC calls for national R&I investments to be decoupled from deficit rules until the 3% spending target is met. In addition, other funds (e.g. cohesion) should be increasingly used and aligned with R&I activities;
• underscores the importance of skills and education, and calls for a more effective pan-European recognition of standards for qualifications (e.g. EU degree);
• recognises the strategic role of foresight and calls for it to be embedded in the governance of the fifth freedom.

For more information, please contact the INT Section Secretariat.