Maria da Graça Carvalho participated in the ERA Conference 2012: Fostering Efficiency, Excellence and Growth . From the Public Consultation towards the Completion of ERA. MEP Carvalho made an intervention in the concluding session. The moderator was Anneli Pauli, Deputy Director General Research and Innovation, Innovation and ERA, European Commission. Among the speakers in this session there were also Olli Rehn, Vice-President of the European Commission, Commissioner for Economic and monetary affairs and the Euro; Anne Glover, EU Chief Scientific Adviser; Craig Mundie, Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer and Costas Iacovou, Director of Planning at Planning Bureau, Cyprus.
In the European Council conclusions of 4 February 2011, the Heads of State and Government called on the EU to rapidly address remaining obstacles to complete the European Research Area by 2014. In response, the Commission intends to propose a European Research Area (ERA) Framework in 2012.
From 13 September until 30 November 2011, the European Commission ran a public consultation on the ERA Framework which has collected the views of a broad range of research stakeholders on the main bottlenecks to creating a genuine single market for knowledge, research and innovation. The purpose of the ERA Conference was an important milestone in the ongoing preparations of the ERA Framework. In it, the responses to public consultation and their implications were presented and discussed. The event provided a platform for prominent stakeholders that discussed further where they saw major bottlenecks and helped to mobilise a broad consensus and support for the way forward via the ERA Framework.