The annual conference of the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations (EARTO) in Barcelona this week highlighted how technology centres are turning to the generation of more sustainable and more digital technology that will have a greater impact on companies, the economy and society.
‘We’re ready for all the major challenges anticipated in the EU agenda, including the new EU Innovation Agenda, the new EU strategy for Technology Infrastructures and the new key developments in industrial and digital policy, such as the European Chips Act’, said EARTO President Antti Vasara at the opening of the conference.
Teresa Riesgo, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation’s Secretary General for Innovation, emphasised ‘cooperation and collaboration’ as elements that are ‘necessary to solve the challenges we’ve been facing in recent years’.
This means ‘giving value to technology centres so they can act as catalysts for this digital and green transition’, so they can facilitate ‘key technology infrastructures, where companies and, fundamentally, SMEs will be able to use technologies that still aren’t mature, to be ahead of the market’, explained Joan Guasch, the Director of International Development and Public Programmes at the Eurecat technology centre.
The welcome session also featured Roger Torrent, the Government of Catalonia’s Minister of Business and Employment, and Margrethe Vestager, the Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age.
The role of technology centres in the European twin transition
As part of the EARTO annual conference, organised this year by the Eurecat technology centre, Philippe Larrué, a policy analyst at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), presented the results of the study on the contribution of technology centres to socio-economic recovery, resilience and the twin transition.
According to Áureo Díaz-Carrasco, the executive director of the Spanish Federation of Technology Centres (FEDIT), ‘the role of technology centres in this transition in which we are immersed has two sides, economic and social’.
‘We aren’t research bodies that work only for the economic benefit of our clients, but rather we need a social return’ and, in this sense, ‘this digital and green transition needs technology centres with a much more relevant role’, he stressed.
In the area of climate change mitigation and adaptation, Miquel Rovira, the director of Eurecat’s Sustainability Area, underscored that technology centres ‘also have the ability to establish an approach beyond technology to address the problem in a systemic way’ and, therefore, ‘to take an interdisciplinary approach to apply different technologies and hybridise them to create a positive impact’.
‘We have to be able to exploit technologies from the idea until they end up having an application for the benefit of society’, such as, for example, in the IMPETUS project, which generates climate change adaptation methods, Rovira remarked.
Every year, the EARTO annual conference brings together over 200 participants from all the R&D agents and institutions in the European Union. With high-level speakers from the European Commission and other key institutions, as well as EARTO members and industry representatives, the EARTO conference is a meeting point for exchanging opinions and information about EU policies and funding.
The EARTO network includes 150,000 highly qualified researchers from over 20 countries who manage a wide range of innovation infrastructures.
