Scientific and technological development in central and eastern Europe

Resolution 1263 (2001)

Author(s):

Parliamentary Assembly

Origin

Assembly debate on 28 September 2001 (32nd Sitting) (see Doc 9184, report of the Committee on Culture, Science and Education, rapporteur: Mr Matĕjů). Text adopted by the Assembly on 28 September 2001 (32nd Sitting).

Thesaurus

1. The Assembly is aware of the importance of scientific and technological development for the integration of countries of central and eastern Europe into the community of economically advanced European countries.

2. The countries of central and east Europe have undergone a serious reduction in public funding for scientific research and development (R&D). Reductions have varied between and within countries.

3. Several central and east European countries, in particular those of the Commonwealth of Independent States, are still experiencing the consequences of the failure of the centrally-planned economy. The main problems are that they have been unable to establish an effective co-ordination between academy and university-run science and technology and applied science and technology, or to involve scientists from military science and technology establishments in the civil sector. Full advantage has not been taken of the available scientific and human potential. The research community has lost its social status and political influence and unemployment has increased dramatically among scientists.

4. There is, in general, an ongoing brain drain towards western Europe and the United States.

5. There are signals of positive developments in the countries which are lagging behind. This is the case for several cities in Russia, which are expected to become important centres of information technology.

6. The Assembly recalls its Resolution 1075 (1996) on scientific and technological co-operation with central and east European countries, and calls upon the governments of Council of Europe member states:

i to intensify pan-European R&D co-operation, in particular by enhancing the R&D component in western assistance programmes targeted towards central and east European countries;

ii to involve central and east European countries as closely as possible in pan-European R&D programmes, in particular in the forthcoming European Union Framework Programme 6 for research and technological development, and prepare them for full integration in any extended European Research Area;

iii to support the development, in central and east Europe, of a network of “centres of excellence”, created strictly on a competitive basis with a strong participation of reviewers from western countries, defined as operational R&D units, either independent or functioning within a locally established research organisation, having their own specific agendas and preferably their own organisational and administrative boundaries, with the potential to contribute to the stabilisation of the research establishment, to a decrease in the brain drain phenomenon and to helping economic development;

iv to encourage researchers and research institutions from western Europe to apply the same standards that they use in their own countries when assessing research projects coming from central and east European countries;

v to encourage European financial institutions to support initiatives that might accelerate the development of scientific communities in central and east European countries and lead to a more efficient use of their intellectual potential.

7. The Assembly also calls in particular on the governments of central and east European countries:

i to analyse the basic trends in research activities at national level and assess the efficiency of the measures taken over the last few years with a view to developing R&D efforts and elaborating explicit policies for stimulating technological innovations;

ii to increase the percentage of the GDP allocated to research and technological development;

iii to give encouragement to such priority areas as the dissemination of electronic data processing, information technologies and telecommunications in the economy and society, the development of small technology-based firms, the increase in the efficiency of technology transfer, the dissemination of environmentally-friendly technologies, the acceleration of the commercialisation of research results and inventions and, from this, the development of the R&D infrastructure;

iv to analyse the impact on pan-European co-operation in R&D of administrative measures officially destined to prevent prejudices in the field of economic and scientific co-operation, such as the ones put into practice in Russia, where scientists have been asked to inform their tutelar authorities on all their contacts abroad;

v to invite universities and academies of science to review their respective roles in the national R&D systems and to propose, for instance, how the research institutes of academies of science could be transformed into centres of research and postgraduate education;

vi to encourage closer links between research and higher education, where these were artificially separated during the communist era, and support the evolution of the research establishment towards a greater sensitivity to the needs of society in general and industry in particular;

vii to intensify co-operation among themselves, in order to allow the countries lagging behind to use the experience of the more successful countries in the restructuration of their R&D systems.