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Report of the Roundtable
HORIZON 2020 for a more sustainable and fairer knowledge society:
What role for the citizen, civil society and the public good?
On the 7th of June, the Horizon 2020 NGO Alliance invited members of the European Parliament, representatives from the European Commission, from research institutes and from other NGOs to discuss its demand for a strong involvement of civil society in Horizon 2020. Horizon 2020 is the financial instrument implementing the EU’s flagship initiative Innovation Union. In December 2011, the commission presented the first legal proposals for Horizon 2020. In the beginning of 2014 Horizon 2020 should start.
Several topics have been brought forward at the conference: a more inclusive approach towards innovation, the need to shift the focus from resource efficiency to resource conservation and public access to knowledge generated by publicly funded research. The conference offered the opportunity to have a democratic debate between civil society and policy makers as part of the Horizon 2020 consultation process.
The Director of IFOAM EU, Marco Schlüter, moderated the roundtable. Urs Niggli, director of FIBL and representing IFOAM EU, questioned the members of the European Parliament present about resource efficiency. How should Horizon 2020 pursue its commitment to ‘an absolute decoupling of economic growth from resource use’?
The topics raised by the NGO Alliance were well received by the members of the European Parliament and they encouraged the NGO Alliance to continue its work on the amendments. The deadline to present the amendments at the European Parliament is the 26th of June. The coming days IFOAM EU and the NGO Alliance will hence increase efforts to make sure our amendments are included in the legislative proposal.
Click here to view the presentation by Dr Claudia Neubauer from Fondation Sciences Citoyens.
This Event is co-financed by the European Commission, DG Environment.
The sole responsibility for the organisation and content lies with the
IFOAM EU Group.
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