
EC President von der Leyen highlights EOSC at World Economic Forum
All eyes were on EOSC at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos this morning when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described "a trusted pool of non-personalised data that governments, businesses and other stakeholders can contribute to...thereby opening up a resource for innovation."
In a special address which covered work, climate, data, and Brexit, President von der Leyen stated that Europe would "co-create a framework to allow the use of this data." She added that the creation of the European Open Science Cloud was underway and that it would be a "trusted space for researchers to store their data and access data from other disciplines."
The President stressed the potential role of EOSC in the transition "from an economy based on fossil fuels, towards a sustainable and a data economy", and that this "will be a resource for open innovation, and bring new solutions to the market."
"We will create a pool of interlinked information, a ‘web of research data'. Every researcher will be able to better use not only their own data, but also those of others." This will ultimately lead researchers to new solutions, and President von der Leyen proudly stressed that Europe is the first in the world to do that.
The precious contributions from some of the largest European science organisations, such as CERN or the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), were mentioned as well, calling attention to the scope of the task at hand.
The President's highlighting of the EOSC at the World Economic Forum signals the importance of the EOSC initiative to the EC's policy priorities. There is no doubt the EOSC will play an important role in Europe's future: coming from science and mainly for science, but with a clear perspective to open it up to society and economy.