The Insider, Season 2, Episode 4

“A 2026 Deep Dive with Muriel Attané”

Europe enters 2026 with a strong inheritance in research and innovation. Well-established frameworks, mature institutions, and a long-standing reputation for scientific excellence continue to underpin its global position. But the year ahead will test something more demanding: Europe’s ability to act strategically in a context shaped by geopolitical pressure, industrial competition, and accelerating technological change.

In this episode of The Insider, Ricardo Miguéis is joined by Muriel Attané, Secretary General of EARTO, for a wide-ranging conversation on where Europe’s research and innovation system stands, and the choices now taking shape beneath the surface.

Part 1 – Looking at Europe from the outside

The discussion deliberately starts beyond Europe’s own policy debates. Drawing on Muriel’s recent international engagements, including in South Korea and Canada, the episode explores how Europe is perceived as a research and technology partner, and how global actors assess its reliability, speed, and strategic clarity.

The conversation looks at how international collaboration is evolving in a more politicised environment, where research, technology and geopolitics are increasingly intertwined. It also examines what external partners read into Europe’s current discussions around FP10 and the European Competitiveness Fund, and how those signals shape expectations about Europe’s future role.

This first part focuses on positioning and perception: where Europe inspires confidence, where questions arise, and why credibility, coordination and clarity matter as much as formal frameworks.

Part 2 – FP10, competitiveness and the capacity to deliver

The second part turns inward, shifting from perspective to analysis. Rather than revisiting familiar reform narratives, the discussion looks at the quieter dynamics inherited from 2025: mounting pressure for speed and scale, changing governance patterns, and growing questions about institutional readiness.

A central focus is the evolving relationship between FP10 and the European Competitiveness Fund. Beyond funding volumes or programme architecture, the conversation examines steering capacity, governance choices, and the challenge of aligning instruments, actors and timelines in a system under strain.

Throughout the episode, Research and Technology organisations (RTOs) emerge as key, if often understated, actors. Positioned at the interface between research, industry, and policy, they are increasingly called upon to help translate ambition into action, coordinate across ecosystems, and respond at speed to shifting priorities.

Rather than offering predictions, the episode closes with a set of questions that will define the years ahead: how Europe chooses to govern its innovation system, where it is willing to prioritise, and how long difficult decisions can be deferred without consequence.

Rather than offering predictions, the episode closes by identifying the issues that will decisively shape Europe’s trajectory in the years ahead — and the risks of postponing difficult decisions.

Listen to “A 2026 Deep Dive with Muriel Attané”

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References:

During the episode, Ricardo Miguéis refers to two books that help frame the discussion around state capacity, innovation and long-term competitiveness. For listeners interested in exploring these ideas further, the references are listed below:

• How to Make an Entrepreneurial State: Why Innovation Needs Bureaucracy

Kattel, R., Drechsler, W., & Karo, E. (2022). Yale University Press.

• How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations

Frey, C. B. (2025). Princeton University Press.

The Insider - Season 2, Episode 2

"European Innovation Scoreboard 2025 Explained: Bridging Data and Policy with Alasdair Reid"

Season 2 continues with a topic that sits right at the crossroads of evidence and strategy in European research: the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) 2025. We talk a lot about innovation in Europe — but do we really understand the numbers we rely on to judge how well we’re doing?

In this episode, Ricardo Miguéis is joined by Alasdair Reid, economist and long-standing contributor to Europe’s innovation policy framework. Alasdair has been closely involved with the European Innovation Scoreboard since its origin, overseeing key elements of innovation policy benchmarking, and currently serves as coordinator for the 2024-2027 period. His perspective reflects a deep, system-level understanding of how innovation indicators are developed, interpreted, and translated into policy.

With the new EIS 2025 now out, this conversation is a chance to take a step back and look at what these indicators actually tell us, and what they don’t.

Part 1 – Making Sense of the Numbers

The first half of the episode looks at how the scoreboard came about, how it has changed over the years, and what the 2025 edition reveals about Europe’s innovation landscape. Ricardo and Alasdair discuss:

• What stands out in the EIS 2025 results, and where the data remains silent
• Why countries with similar tools and spending patterns often move in very different directions
• The role that governance, trust and institutional capacity quietly play in shaping innovation
• Why benchmark indicators often become political stories, not just technical ones
• How the scoreboard can be both incredibly useful — and sometimes misleading

It’s a reminder that metrics don’t simply describe reality; they influence how we understand it.

Part 2 – From Indicators to Strategy (and FP10)

The conversation then widens to Europe’s bigger innovation challenges and the structural questions behind them. This includes:

• The long-standing regional paradox: why some areas surge ahead while others remain stuck
• Lessons from countries like China or Canada, and what Europe can and cannot borrow from them
• The persistent gap between policy intentions and actual outcomes on the ground
• Whether our current indicators are fit for a world shaped by green, digital, social and geopolitical transitions
• How FP10 might look if Europe treated metrics not just as a scoreboard, but as a steering tool

One theme keeps resurfacing: measurement shapes strategy, and Europe may need to rethink what it values if it wants different results.

For anyone involved in European R&I — from research organisations and innovation agencies to policymakers and analysts — this episode is an opportunity to hear directly from someone who has helped define the indicators we all work with. It sheds light on the logic behind the EIS, its limitations, and the broader implications for the next Framework Programme.

Listen to “European Innovation Scoreboard 2025 Explained: Bridging Data and Policy with Alasdair Reid” on The Insider.