At the recent R&I Days’ in Brussels, the panel “Communicating Europe through Science Diplomacy”, a fully packed room was welcomed by Jean-Eric Paquet, Director-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) and Maria-Cristina Russo, Director at the Directorate for International Cooperation. They highlighted that Science Diplomacy was championed by Commissioner Carlos Moedas and the incoming “geopolitical Commission” will certainly continue on the path positioning Europe as a global player, addressing global challenges and supporting a dialogue for a fair and just society – fed also by science and active science diplomacy.
Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, President of the European Research Council (ERC) chaired a session with in which S4D4C was mentioned by Marga Gual Soler, Senior Science Diplomacy Advisor, Member of the Research, Innovation and Science Policy Experts Group (RISE) to European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, Carlos Moedas and advisor to the science diplomacy cluster projects InsSciDE and S4D4C. Marga highlighted the S4D4C Madrid Declaration and invited the audience to join in and sign it. Starting from her own experience living abroad, she highlighted the importance of European narratives and most importantly called for Horizon Europe, the upcoming EU framework programming funding Research and Innovation, to be a beacon of openness and global collaboration to strengthen the influence and positive impact of the EU in an increasingly multipolar and uncertain world. She called for the EU scientific endeavors to be aligned with external policies and to support creating mutual understanding between societies. Cooperation is necessary to have a greater impact and address the global challenges that concern us all – and in particular the youth. The discussion also highlighted the tensions between cooperation and competition, between “wanting to move things” and “wanting to control things” and the disruption of diplomacy itself.
In the next two months, a series of events will be covered by the S4D4C consortium:
– 3. Oct. 2019: S4D4C will participate in a science diplomacy workshop organised by the Strategic Forum for International Cooperation (SFIC) in Brussels.
– 10 Oct 2019: S4D4C’s 2nd Networking Meeting – Berlin. Towards a European Science Diplomacy Roadmap. The event will be accompanied by the projects’ General Assembly, a focus group and a co-creation workshop also organised by the project.
– 15 Oct 2019: S4D4C participates in a debate on science diplomacy organised by Czech stakeholders in Brussels
– 21-23 Oct 2019: S4D4C Science Diplomacy Workshop Trieste. We organise a training workshop at The World Academy of Science (TWAS).
– 20 – 24 Nov 2019: S4D4C organises a panel and a focus group at the World Science Forum 2019 in Budapest
S4D4C is a Horizon 2020 project coordinated by ZSI.
