Bratislava Declaration of Young Researchers presented at EU Competitiveness Council meeting in Slovakia

The Council of Ministers responsible for competitiveness (research) of all 28 EU Member States and EFTA countries held an informal meeting in Bratislava. The meeting was chaired by Peter Plavčan, Minister for Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic, in the presence of Carlos Moedas, EU Commissioner for Science, Research and Innovation. Young scientists who had been involved in the preparation of the Declaration also joined the political discussion to give their interesting point of view.

They discussed policies to support young researchers, increase the attractiveness of science-based careers, further investment in the human potential in research and development, ways to attract the best researchers from third countries.

The Bratislava Declaration of Young Researchers focusses on 4 topics:

• Enabling great people to realise their ideas to understand and improve the world: reorganising funding streams to trust and empower young researchers, incorporating research and scientific skills into high-school education, and creating sustainable and effective funding schemes.
  
• Sustainable and transparent career trajectories: employment-stability, explicit criteria for career progression, recruiting permanent staff researchers, better mobility between the public and private sectors, and training and career development of young researchers.
  
• A diverse, collaborative, inter-disciplinary, open, and ethical research environment: EU-wide equality and diversity charter, reorganising funding schemes and the research environment, and free sharing of data and ideas (e.g., open access publications and open data) and ethical behaviour.
  
• A healthy work-life balance: childcare provisions, parental care, flexible working practices, dual-career opportunities, facilitating and equally rewarding diverse forms of mobility.
  

The Declaration will be annexed to the Council conclusions for adoption at the Competitiveness Council, Research section, on 29 November 2016 in Brussels.

In the second part of the meeting, the ministers discussed also the development of the European research, development and innovation environment, including improvement of framework conditions for EU researchers.

Background documents are available here and the press release here.