A two-speed Europe in the area of research

The world is moving fast and European Union invests significantly into moving towards smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. One of the driving forces for Europe’s advancement is a strong commitment towards the development of knowledge and innovation based economy, supported by relevant European policy initiatives; in particular, research and innovation Framework programmes. The current one, Horizon 2020, promotes excellence in research. Analysing the participation of Member states’ groups (EU-15 and EU-13) to the European Union research Framework programmes and corresponding impact, unequal influence is observed – the dominance of EU-15 country group is obvious. Given the current heterogeneous status of EU-15 and EU-13 countries, such approach increases the disparities between the country groups in terms of involvement into the research projects. Since the Sixth Framework Programme Higher educational institutions (HEI) constitute majority of the Framework programme participants collecting more than 30% of the funding thus determining the scientific progress in Europe. For several Framework programmes in a row the leading higher educational institutions are University of Cambridge and University of Oxford. However, size makes sense – among the top-50 HEI only few universities form Denmark and Sweden can be found, but none from Baltic countries.