Aarhus: Two pieces of legislation were supposed to reshape how European research money and European researchers move this year. One has been postponed. The other is still being drafted. For laboratories planning beyond the current funding programme, that leaves an unhelpful amount of uncertainty.
The European Research Area Act closed its public consultation on 23 January, and the Commission has signalled a proposal in the third quarter. The act is meant to give legal weight to what officials call the fifth freedom, the free circulation of knowledge and talent alongside goods, services, capital and people. In practice that means attacking the everyday obstacles researchers actually hit: pension rights that do not travel, recognition of qualifications, incompatible rules on data access, and national funding schemes that quietly exclude foreign applicants.
The Innovation Act has had a rougher year. The Commission planned to present it in March as a regulation, then pulled it from the agenda, and Science Business reported that officials wanted more time. The act targets the stretch between a promising result and a product on the market, where European companies consistently lose ground to American and Chinese competitors despite comparable scientific output.
Both files carry a structural problem the Commission cannot legislate away. Research spending in Europe is overwhelmingly national. The Union budget funds a minority share, and the disparity between member states that invest three percent of national income in research and those that invest under one percent has not narrowed in twenty years. An act that harmonises rules does not move money.
Universities have pressed for something more concrete than coordination. They want binding provisions on researcher mobility, portable social security, and an end to the practice of restricting national grant schemes to domestic institutions. Several member states view exactly those provisions as an encroachment on competences they never agreed to share, which is why the act has spent so long in preparation.
The timing is awkward for another reason. Negotiations on the next multiannual budget are running in parallel, and the shape of the successor to the current research programme remains unsettled. Research organisations argue that an act defining the rules of the game should arrive before the budget that funds it, not after. The sequence appears likely to run the other way.
Meanwhile the practical work continues without new legislation. Joint programming, shared research infrastructures and open access mandates all operate under existing instruments, and they have produced real results without a framework law. Sceptics inside national ministries use that record to argue the act is unnecessary. Supporters reply that the results came despite the fragmentation, not because anyone solved it.
A proposal this quarter would still leave the negotiation to run through 2027 at the earliest. Researchers who hoped for clarity this year will get a text, and then a long wait.
