Following a welcome address by ERC President Professor Maria Leptin and Leopoldina President Professor Bettina Rockenbach, international representatives from science and politics will discuss ideas for FP10, the successor to Horizon Europe. The aim is to foster a direct, solutions-oriented exchange on how Europe can fulfil its ambition to lead in science and technology. The focus will be on reducing bureaucracy, increasing flexibility, enhancing impact and ensuring fairer funding. The discussions will also address how to strengthen freedom of science as the EU’s “fifth freedom”, thereby laying the foundations for a new knowledge-based economy. Further topics will include better coordination between national policies and EU initiatives, as well as the role of international scientific cooperation in times of geopolitical challenge. For this reason, the panel discussions will also include senior representatives from universities and academies in the United Kingdom, Japan, India and Türkiye.
Participants will include, among others, Ekaterina Zaharieva (GERB), European Commissioner for Start-ups, Research and Innovation; Dr Enrico Letta (Partito Democratico), former Prime Minister of Italy; Dr Christian Ehler (CDU), Member of the European Parliament; mathematician and Fields Medal winner Professor Maryna Viazovska; innovation researcher Professor Dietmar Harhoff, PhD; and physician Professor Severine Vermeire.
The event is a cooperation between the European Research Council (ERC) and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Its partners are the national academies of the Netherlands, Slovakia, Finland and Cyprus.
The event is open to all interested participants. The conference language is English. To attend in person, you must register by Thursday 18 June.
The conference can also be followed via livestream at: https://webcast.ec.europa.eu/voices-from-science-2026-06-29