A milestone for the research ecosystem
Guillaume Milot and Emma Sokkanen from DG RTD set the scene by elaborating on the EU’s strategy on research and technology infrastructures, published in September 2025. The strategy, which is “a milestone in itself”, as they said, positions Research Infrastructures (RIs) and Technology Infrastructures (TIs) as fundamental, complementary pillars of Europe’s R&I ecosystem. While RIs support scientific excellence through access to equipment, data and collections, TIs enable the development, testing and upscaling of new technologies for market adoption. Together, they form a continuum of services essential for closing Europe's innovation gap and safeguarding the Union’s technological sovereignty. Among other things, the strategy aims to facilitate hubs, connect facilities and pool strategic assets.
Charter of Access
Milot and Sokkanen outlined the key challenges the strategy is seeking to address: from fragmented policies and funding procedures, which are particularly burdensome for SMEs and startups, to skills gaps and the untapped potential of AI and digitalisation. To lower barriers for industrial users, the Commission is developing a Charter of Access, which will be a voluntary framework harmonising visibility, transparency, intellectual property, contracts and support for companies. Organisations can sign up to be early endorsers. In addition, a call for good practices is open to contributions. Looking ahead, the proposal for the next Framework Programme (FP10) earmarks €10.9 billion for research and technology infrastructures, with up to 20% co-funding for the construction of “critical new world-class capacities of European research and technology infrastructures.”
EU approaches to shared challenges
In the second session, Jeroen Arts (Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science) and Patrick Schelvis (Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs) reflected on the significance of the strategy in the Netherlands. The Dutch landscape is already deeply connected to that of the EU; any improvement hinges upon cooperation and prioritisation. Arts and Schelvis welcomed the strategy both as validation of what the Netherlands is already doing and as an impetus for further action. The Netherlands faces some of the same challenges as the rest of the EU: how to simplify access to infrastructures, how to promote digitalisation and internationalisation. Access, for example, is an area best handled on a European level.
‘Connectivity is a means to an end, not a goal in itself’
Key challenges highlighted by Arts and Schelvis relate to governance, connectivity and the need to avoid silos. Digitalising procedures is relevant, but a one-size-fits-all approach does not work. Governance needs to be smarter and faster, they explained; some infrastructures take 20 to 30 years to get up and running, which is too long. Funding should foster collaboration, which works best when people gather around a shared issue and work to solve a problem together. This is what policy needs to be shaped around: connecting infrastructures, the speakers stressed, ‘is a means to an end, not a goal in itself.’ Importantly, it is important to avoid silos. Some facilities, after all, are part research infrastructure and part technology infrastructure, it is not always a binary divide.
Testimonials from the field: ‘Building a bigger bridge’
Four voices from the field illustrated these themes concretely. Richard Zijdeman presented CLARIAH-NL, which merges CLARIN and DARIAH into a single CommonLab for arts and humanities research. As a distributed research infrastructure, CLARIAH-NL provides shared vocabulary and research catalogues and a secure analysis environment. As a result, a historian, for example, no longer needs to consult separate tools. This enables truly multidisciplinary work. Zijdeman called for better recognition of infrastructure-building as scholarly work. Jan Scholten described how the Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR) relies heavily on infrastructures such as a wind tunnel, research aeroplanes and a drone centre. Moreover, these infrastructures are complex and capital-intensive in both construction and maintenance. Scholten shared NLR’s specific access model for SMEs, where they include SMEs and startups as co-developers in EU projects. Navigating national rules and funding schemes does remain a challenge: Scholten noted that the 20% EU co-funding is hard to leverage if you don’t know how or where to secure the remaining 80%.
Testimonials from the field: ‘Keep the end user in mind’
Nicolas Daval of Quobly, a company developing silicon-based quantum computing, spoke about TNO's role in providing access to infrastructures, and, even more importantly, to critical expertise. Finally, Géraud Guilloud presented findings from the RITIFI project and shared key recommendations, including on how to strengthen a coherent RI-TI collaboration framework and promote access for broader and strategic industry-research collaboration. Guilloud’s closing message: successful RTI collaboration must always take the end user into account.
Context
Research and technology infrastructures are physical facilities that support innovation. These include, amongst other things, laboratories, data centres and test environments. Through the European Strategy on Research and Technology Infrastructures, which forms part of European Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva’s mission statement, the Commission aims to strengthen these ecosystems and, in doing so, help to realise the fifth freedom. Three objectives are central to the strategy: 1) the quality of the infrastructures must continue to be guaranteed, 2) access to the facilities must be made easier, and 3) they must be better aligned with the needs of scientists, innovators and the business community. The expected revised version of the Charter of Access for Industrial Users to Research and Technology, part of the Start-up and Scale-up Strategy, is also intended to contribute to this.
