The Draghi report is a big opportunity for European universities

The long-awaited Draghi report on European competitiveness, finally published on 8 September, provides major encouragement for universities – but also identifies several major challenges that would face them if the report were to be implemented in full.

Commissioned by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, the report, by former Italian prime minister and European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, will frame the EU’s debates about its next seven-year budget envelope, the Multiannual Financial Framework (2028-35).

It identifies three fundamental structural challenges for Europe: an ageing workforce, fierce export competition in increasingly restricted global markets, and lack of competitiveness in advanced technology. Europe has only four tech companies in the global top 50, and the EU’s top three companies investing in R&I are in the automotive sector – not in advanced technology.

Having lost so much ground globally, Europe needs to act fast, and it must act hard –not least through research, innovation and higher education.

To begin with, the report echoes the sector by proposing to double the budget of the next framework programme for research and innovation (FP10), the successor to Horizon Europe. But for Draghi, this is conditional on a greater focus on instruments that are most effective. If the implication of Draghi’s report is that a larger FP10 budget should be spent on areas deemed to be key to Europe’s economic competitiveness, such as AI, pharmaceuticals and green technologies, how will universities respond?

To his credit, Draghi resists any urge to play off research and innovation against each other. With Draghi’s focus on what works, he insists on a doubling of funding for the hugely successful European Research Council – and, surely, the frontier research that it funds is essential to ensure Europe remains competitive, including in areas that are not yet in the sights of policymakers.

Draghi is similarly supportive of a significantly expanded and more autonomous European Innovation Council, where funding decisions are made by experts rather than bureaucrats.

EU-wide collaboration on large-scale research infrastructures is another key theme of Draghi’s report – chiming with von der Leyen’s proposal for a European Cern for AI, made in her political guidelines to frame the Commission’s next five years.

With a workforce declining by 2 million a year until 2040 and hostility to immigration only rising, rising GDP levels can only come from significant productivity growth. Thus, Draghi demands a comprehensive European strategy to address skills gaps, for all stages of education. He proposes in effect that the EU acquire competences in education alongside member states (which currently have sole competency), more industry involvement in skills development, and better data on skills needs so these can be addressed immediately.

He also calls for a common EU-wide certification, making courses (such as micro-credits) intelligible to employers. Within this framework, Draghi proposes a boost in EU funding to address the skills gap, on the condition that the EU becomes fully accountable to member states for its investments.

Finally, Draghi is very concerned about what he sees as the global weakness of EU universities, with only three of them in the global top 50, measured by number of publications in top journals. In response, he proposes an “ERC for Institutions” – in effect, a Europe-wide excellence initiative according to the German, French or Polish models. And he proposes to make universities more attractive for key professorial talent by creating “EU Chairs”, with salaries determined by EU salary scales – likely to be higher than universities’ own scales.

Clearly, many proposals need to be fleshed out further. The challenges around providing sufficient STEM graduates are not new in any national context – so what is it exactly that concerted European action can do better? The proposal to strengthen the EU’s competences in higher education vis-à-vis member states must be tightly argued, because it will have opponents as well as supporters. Conversely, for those who prefer education to remain a sole national competence, what is their suggestion to overcome past failures in addressing the urgent EU-wide skills need?

Europe’s universities have rightly engaged in a major transition towards assessing research performance primarily on qualitative indicators. In this context, Draghi’s measure for the EU universities’ global position may be simplistic, but there remains a question about how to respond to EU universities’ relatively low representation in the top global tier of citations, league tables and globally recognised awards.

In this context, any debate on how Europe’s universities can be strengthened in breadth and depth must consider global issues like the search for talent and competition for resources, as well as the distinctive structures, funding, and collaborations that distinguish Europe’s public universities. Draghi’s report is a timely prompt to ask: if we want Europe’s universities to be distinguished globally by excellence and inclusiveness, how can we achieve this in practice? And what distinctive new funding instruments do we need?

The Draghi report sees Europe’s universities as central to the European project, re-defined for the 21st century. Its recommendations have already framed the political guidelines which formed the basis of Ursula von der Leyen re-election as Commission president. And, together with the guidelines, their impact can be clearly felt in the mission letters that will guide the priorities of the next College of Commissioners – whose number include, for the first time, a separate commissioner for start-ups, research and innovation. Universities, too, should take its analysis, and its proposals, seriously.

Jan Palmowski is secretary general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities.