Santander, (EFE).- The Research Ministers of the European Union will debate this week in Santander on the value of the innovation initiative in the Mediterranean (PRIMA), the new Horizon Europe 2025-2027 plan, and the strategy to obtain, through scientific infrastructures, energy through fusion.
All the member states of the European Union will be at this informal meeting on competitiveness of Research Ministers, which will be held on July 28 at the Palacio de la Magdalena within the Spanish Presidency of the EU.
The meeting will also be attended by representatives of Norway and Iceland, as partner countries of the Horizon Europe programme, and Switzerland, as the main collaborator in the matter.
This meeting, which will be preceded on July 27 by a dinner for EU ministers and their community partners at the Botín Center in Santander, includes two debates.
Towards the 2025-2027 Horizon
The first will be around the Association for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area (Partnership on Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area, PRIMA) and there will be a second debate on the current Horizon Europe program and its development for the second plan, which will be published in 2025.
According to government sources, this meeting in Santander will also discuss one of the “fundamental pillars” of the scientific infrastructure strategic plan that seeks to generate energy through fusion (the source of energy responsible for light and heat from the sun and stars).
This project, which was already discussed at a meeting in March of 14 EU countries and Japan, is aimed at creating a research center that will work on essential materials for nuclear fusion.
Fusion Power
Spain and Croatia are collaborating in the construction of this center, on which the Spanish Government intends to produce “a turning point” during its Presidency of the EU.
The competitiveness meeting of the EU Research Ministers in Santander will begin at around 8:30 a.m. when the head of Spanish Science, Diana Morant, will attend the journalists before the start of the plenary session, which is scheduled to start around 9:00 a.m.
The Deputy Secretary General of the Union for the Mediterranean, Álvaro Albacete, will open the first debate of this meeting, focused on the value of PRIMA, “essential for its scientific component”.
In fact, this first work session, under the title “the current role of science diplomacy”, will analyze the request of the Council and the European Commission to improve coordination in science diplomacy.
The second session will focus on the second strategic plan for Horizon Europe 2025-2027 with an analysis of the first programme, which has a budget of 100,000 million euros and is the most important in research and innovation.
The European ministers will talk about how the planning of this program is working and how it can be carried out better, with a view to the second plan, which has to be published in 2025.
In addition, community Research representatives seek to ensure that states, organizations in the field, and regions work in coordination for this general program.
After the work sessions, at around 3:00 p.m., a press conference will be held with the accredited journalists to report on what was discussed at this informal meeting on competitiveness, which will be attended by the Spanish Minister of Science.