The Lund Declaration of 2015

the lund declaration – december 2015 The Lund Declaration 2015 EUROPE MUST SPEED UP SOLUTIONS TO TACKLE GRAND CHALLENGES THROUGH ALIGNMENT, RESEARCH, GLOBAL COOPERATION AND ACHIEVING IMPACT The Lund Declaration 2009 called upon Member States and European Institutions to focus research on the grand challenges of our times by moving beyond rigid thematic approaches and aligning European and national strate - gies and instruments. During the last six years European institutions, member states and associated countries have taken important steps to align and coordinate resources and shift the focus towards society’s major challenges. Today Europe still faces a wide range of major challenges and business as usual is not an option. The Lund Declaration 2015 therefore emphasises the urgency of increased efforts in alignment at national and European level and that investments in research and innovation better and more rapidly be exploited to the benefit of society. It identifies four priority areas, each with defined priority actions, and calls on all stakeholders to take these priorities into account in their field of responsibility. • Europe needs clear political commitment to step-up efforts to align strategies, instruments, resources and actors at national and European level in order to address the grand societal challenges. • This commitment needs to be underpinned by an excellent science base, world-class research infra - structures and a new generation of researchers with the right set of skills, notably creativity, entrepreneur- ship and innovation. • Europe needs to connect with partners around the world, in advanced, emerging and developing countries to address the grand societal challenges in partnership and to attract the world’s best researchers and innovators and private sector investment. • Greater impacts on the challenges have to be achieved through involvement of the public sector and industry in knowledge creation, with a stronger focus on open innovation and the role of end-users....Priority actions: ... Strengthen open science including open access to both publications and data as well as the fostering of knowledge exchange...."