The Blue Card scheme, to be voted upon by the European Parliament on Thursday, is an "essential element" for the recovery of Europe's research sector, which had already been struggling to halt the brain drain to the US and Australia before the outbreak of the crisis, Erkki Ormala, Nokia's vice president for technology and trade policy, told a conference in Brussels.
Richard Portes, a researcher at the University of London, expressed fear that the current crisis could further negatively impact upon Europe's competitiveness, which he said had already fallen, resulting in "severe recruiting problems".
But some argued that the crisis also offers an opportunity for the research field to win over students who would normally choose to work in the financial sector but were scared off by the uncertainties there.
A new survey, conducted by Gallup and presented yesterday, revealed that although 67% of young people said they were interested in science and technology issues, only 19% said they were considering studying social sciences and only 10% said they wanted to pursue natural sciences.
Given likely cuts in R&D budgets due to the gloomy economic outlook, the goal of attracting more high-skilled people to the field appears to have become even more challenging, European policymakers and researchers agreed.
"Young and innovative" firms will be "particularly hard hit" by the increasing liquidity shortage as more and more big banks, which used to be the biggest spenders on R&D, are struggling to survive, said Reinhilde Veugelers, a researcher at the Catholic University of Leuven. Such firms should thus be the main recipients of future funding, researchers said.
Volker Meyer-Guckel, deputy secretary-general of a donor's association for the promotion of sciences and humanities in Germany, was confident that companies would not severely cut their R&D budgets, but rather put spending on hold. "That's what they usually do in a recession," he said.
A concentration on core research issues is likely and necessary, concluded the Nokia representative, predicting that "in the end, the best programmes will survive".
