With this initiative, the European Commission aims to strengthen the European ecosystem of Research and Technology Infrastructures, making sure that they are accessible, interconnected, and aligned with Europe’s long-term scientific, technological, and industrial goals.
Research and Technology Infrastructures (RI-TI) are crucial assets to improve excellence in research and accelerating innovation across sectors, including transport.
ECTRI welcomes the opportunity to contribute to this initiative and highlights the following five key points:
- Europe needs an integrated strategy that treats RI-TI as a unified system, bridging gaps between pure science and industrial application
- Simplifying funding mechanisms and enabling the flexible combination of EU, national, regional, and private resources is essential to improve fund access and long-term sustainability
- Greater visibility and coordination are needed, including a one-stop EU portal, a European quality label, and a dedicated strategic forum modelled on the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures
- The digitalisation of infrastructures must be reinforced by robust frameworks for interoperability, data quality, secure access, and the creation of digital twins to support advanced research and simulations
- Launching a stakeholder enquiry to define priorities and develop a European RI-TI Roadmap that harmonises funding and rules, and supports modernisation, access, and outreach
Read the full contribution here