The European Union’s chief on Tuesday warned that the continent was “losing ground” in the global technology race and must boost research spending to “turn the tide”.

“We must put research and innovation at the heart of Europe’s economy,” EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen told a ceremony celebrating the 70th anniversary of Europe’s CERN physics laboratory.

She hailed the world’s largest particle physics lab for helping put the continent “back on the map” for scientific development, after the post-World War II brain-drain.

“Just like 70 years ago, we live in times of rising geopolitical competition,” she told the ceremony, attended by dignitaries, including Princess Astrid of Belgium and the presidents of Italy, Serbia and Slovakia.

“We are in the midst of a global race for the technologies that will shape the world of tomorrow, from clean tech to quantum, from AI to fusion,” Von der Leyen said, lamenting that “while Europe is home to more researchers than both the US and China, we are losing ground in many fields”.

One of those is patent applications, where the European share has been cut in the last two decades from 30 percent to 15 percent”.

Increase research spending

“It is time to turn the tide,” she said, adding that she wanted “to increase research spending in our next budget”.

The CERN lab on the edge of Geneva straddles the border between France and Switzerland. It seeks to unravel what the universe is made of and how it works, aiming to advance the boundaries of human knowledge.

It employs 2,500 people and welcomes some 17,000 visiting scholars every year.

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—a 27-kilometer proton-smashing ring running about 100 metres below ground—has already begun chipping away at the unknown.

Among other things, it was used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson—dubbed the God particle—which broadened the understanding of how particles acquire mass.

CERN has its sights set on building a huge new particle accelerator that would eclipse the LHC.

A feasibility study is underway for the 91-kilometer Future Circular Collider (FCC), with CERN earlier this year estimating it would cost around $17 billion.

‘Hope’

CERN director general Fabiola Gianotti on Tuesday insisted that it could become “the most extraordinary instrument ever built by humanity to study the fundamental laws of the universe and address many of the outstanding questions”.

She appealed to CERN’s member states—22 European countries plus Israel—to “ensure that CERN has a brilliant future”.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic vowed that his country would double its financial contributions to CERN.

Von der Leyen suggested that if developed, the FCC “could preserve Europe’s scientific edge”.

She said that European countries had to stand together in the face of competition from China, which is evaluating building its own 100-kilometer accelerator “to challenge CERN’s global leadership”.

Gianotti said it was important for CERN to build its accelerator before China does.

“It will be very difficult to have two such facilities in the world,” she told AFP.

© 2024 AFP