The European Parliament yesterday (3 September) called on the Commission to submit proposals prohibiting the use of cloned animals in food products following the publication of a highly cautious report by the EU's food safety authority on the issue.

The EU executive wants to promote more coordinated research on sea and ocean resources in a bid to "reconcile" the competitiveness of Europe's maritime industries and the protection of marine ecosystems.

Parliament yesterday (3 September) backed Commission proposals to boost the development of hydrogen vehicles, but warned that the strategy would fail without concrete measures to support the establishment of a Europe-wide filling station network for hydrogen powered vehicles.

A pilot project that will give unrestricted online access to EU-funded research results was launched yesterday (20 August), which the Commission claims will ensure better exploitation of scientific studies and guarantee a "fair return" for taxpayers. But specialist publishers are unhappy with the move.

While the Union's cautious approach to granting market authorisation to new technology applications like GMOs or products derived from nanotechnology has meant that EU has not suffered from any major backlash, it could also mean the bloc is missing out on major opportunities to improve its competitiveness, argued a policy analyst from a Brussels-based think tank in an interview with EurActiv.com.

While the Union's cautious approach to granting market authorisation to new technology applications like GMOs or products derived from nanotechnology has meant that EU has not suffered from any major backlash, it could also mean the bloc is missing out on major opportunities to improve its competitiveness, argued a policy analyst from a Brussels-based think tank in an interview with EurActiv.com.

A new 18 member-strong governing board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), appointed yesterday (30 July), has until the end of 2009 to identify, select and launch the first EU "innovation hubs", expected to cover the fields of climate change, renewable energy and ICT.

In parallel to European Commission moves to present a strategic EU framework for international science and technology cooperation this autumn, the US science association has announced the establishment of a Centre for Science Diplomacy, which it hopes will help change public attitudes towards the US around the world.

Wind energy could easily provide for more than one fourth of the EU's electricity by 2030 provided that wind farms are better connected to existing electricity grids and that a new grid to exploit the offshore wind industry is built, according to a stakeholder action plan detailing research and political priorities for the sector.

Massive solar power installations in the Sahara desert could feed the EU's growing energy demand via a new supergrid. The idea is backed by France and the UK, which is simultaneously trying to limit priority access for renewables to domestic grids.

As pressure grows on higher education institutes to raise their economic competitiveness and live up to new social responsibilities, a forward-looking study on the subject argues that future universities could well face a "mission overload".

All member states are politically committed to promoting more EU action on space, the French Presidency said after a two-day informal meeting of the bloc's ministers for space. But the issue of where the money for this increased ambition will actually come from will only be discussed later.

EU research ministers are set to agree on topics for joint public research in December. Before that, discussions are likely to focus on narrowing down the broad topics of food or energy security and healthy ageing to find subjects on which pre-commercial developments at national level are not yet underway.   

The French Senate has proposed developing a new European university ranking system to counter the powerful Shanghai world ranking, which is said to favour English-language institutions. With France holding the EU's six-month rotating presidency, the issue is likely to be discussed by EU education ministers in November.

The European Commission wants member states to pool together their money and brains to conduct joint research on major societal challenges such as ageing and energy security, saying purely individual efforts on such vast topics waste resources.

Pan-European research infrastructures such as CERN, the world's largest nuclear research organisation, are to be granted special legal status and exemption from VAT under a new proposal by the Commission. 

A comprehensive higher education reform with significantly increased funding and university autonomy as well as more specialisation, student selection and competition is needed to make the bloc's universities globally competitive, according to Brussels-based think tank Bruegel.

The Commission's annual benchmark report finds that member states' progress towards the Lisbon Strategy's goals on education and training is too slow for them to be reached by 2010 and highlights growing illiteracy rates as a major problem.

Despite Europe leading the United States in the application of digital technologies, it is still far behind in overall economic productivity, argues Robert Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, in the summer edition of Europe's World.

Carbon sequestration, although "not a silver bullet", is an essential bridging technology that needs to be deployed fast if Europe and the rest of the world are serious about tackling climate change, argues Paal Frisvold, head of the Brussels office of the Bellona Foundation, a Norwegian environmental NGO.