Commissioner, Excellencies, Distinguished Guests,

It is a pleasure for me to address this distinguished audience.

I am particularly honoured by your personal interest in the seminar, Commissioner Busquin. I am sure that your presence has added value to this event. I am also grateful for our meeting earlier today, when we had the opportunity to discuss certain research issues in more detail. I am very pleased that you have accepted my invitation to come to Norway to continue our discussions and meet with party colleagues.

I very much welcome your document "Towards a European Research Area". It has started a wide debate on future European research policy. Perhaps we are at the beginning of a new era for European research co-operation? The document presents ambitious goals. To meet the competition from the USA and Japan is not a modest undertaking. I would be interested to know why a country like the USA has a stronger innovation capacity than Europe. Are they better able to define areas where they have a special advantage? Do they have more institutions that are willing to take risks, or has the USA developed a stronger interaction between industry, research and society?

In order to put words and thoughts into action we, as politicians, must be able and willing to be creative and innovative. At the beginning of the new millennium challenges are enormous. We have to make important choices for the future to tackle these challenges. I am thinking of issues such as

• the population growth,
• increased consumption and production that are threatening limited resources,
• challenges to the environment and to energy,

Although Norway is on the outskirts of the European continent, we want to play an active role in finding solutions to the common problems in our society. I wish to signal Norway’s commitment to a stronger European research co-operation.

Before the present social democratic government came into power our Parliament reached general agreement on future research policies in Norway. We have concluded that we need to boost our research commitment. We have embarked upon an ambitious plan to increase research funding. This will be done both from public and private sources over the next five years. A new Research and Innovation Fund established in 1999 will become a major instrument to increase public funding.

We are also considering new incentives in order to stimulate the private sector to increase its research funding. I have on my table proposals from a Royal Commission that has just submitted its report. I will study them and then act.

Our aim is to strengthen the knowledge base, and to promote innovation so that we may meet the urgent challenges of globalisation. I want to underline that we will strengthen long-term fundamental research, primarily in our universities.

We also need to make priorities and define areas where we want to concentrate our efforts. In our research policy we have defined four priority areas for the next few years:

• marine research
• medicine and health care
• research in the intersection between environment and energy
• information and communication technology.

Special funding will be given to these areas.

We know that enterprises, institutions and organisations that are creative and develop new technologies will have a stronger position, and be better equipped to compete under changing conditions. Industry needs to be more forward looking. In Norway we must increase the knowledge content in our products. Our advantage is a population with a high educational level and a regional higher educational system. The challenge is to make better use of a well developed infrastructure.

We will strengthen our efforts to improve quality of research and increase recruitment posts. Also in Norway we want to recruit more women to higher academic positions. Special attention is given to the development of centres of excellence. We will soon receive advice from the Research Council of Norway on how a system of Centres of Excellence should be designed. Also in this respect Commissioner Busquin’s Communication is very interesting to us. I am pleased that six Norwegian research facilities receive support from the EU framework programme as European Research Infrastructures, mainly within marine research, environment and energy. These facilities are scattered from Southern Norway to the arctic Svalbard.

These European Infrastructures reflect some of the areas where Norwegian research can contribute on a European level. Environment, energy, the marine and maritime sector, information and communication technology and space are areas where Norway has developed high competence. Svalbard is of particular interest for international co-operation in arctic research. As you know it has a well-developed infrastructure and unique facilities for many research areas. As part of our research strategy we want to encourage even more international co-operation on Svalbard.

Participation in the EU framework programme is Norway’s most comprehensive commitment. There is broad political agreement in Norway that this co-operation is important, useful and interesting.

You will have noted that many of the issues raised in the Commission's document on the European research area correspond to central aspects in our national research policy. Again, I wish to underline our wish to participate actively in the debates on the European level. In particular, Norway is prepared to play an active role in the development of European centres of excellence and networks, for instance within marine research, arctic research and energy research.

I hope that the seminar will give you a better understanding of how Norwegian research contributes to research co-operation in Europe. I wish you an interesting and enjoyable afternoon.

Thank you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen.