Background Information / press

MAASTRICHT REDEFINES EUROPE AGAIN
By Stafford Wadsworth

Forum Maastricht puts the city and its university center-stage once more. Lisbon talked about improving investment in knowledge and networks, with growth and an educational focus. It talked about making European business more competitive and about promoting active aging and keeping the gray tigers at work. The Maastricht Forum is going to define and redefine what has remained inchoate. It will look at Europe’s social model and at the drive towards political and economic integration inherent in enlargement. It will also reflect on the dangers of fortress Europe and the need for a new constitutional base.

These issues, deriving from original proposals launched in Lisbon and Bologna, form the basis of a major conference to be held in Maastricht, July 1. Here we look both at Forum Maastricht, at the key conference players and touch on some of the issues to be raised and their putative solution.

The Forum and the City
Forum Maastricht, the first of an annual series of conferences to be held by the University on the future of Europe, turns the spotlight on the city again. As a forum and place of discussion for new ideas, it has echoes of the city’s ancient and recent past and, indeed, its future. More than a decade ago, Maastricht became a household word and was, in some respects, almost synonymous with the EU. The defining EU Treaty gave the city world brand status. Time has not stood still and, once again in 2004, the Dutch EU presidency is almost upon us.

Despite its brand image, Maastricht had always been a rather quiet country town, except perhaps on the gastronomic front, where it has always had its own sophistication. Now, with three of its 4 Michelin-starred restaurants within walking distance of one another, it is becoming a mecca for the serious diner.

However, there is another area where the city’s sophistication breaks the surface. That is in the field of higher education. Although Maastricht has its dreaming spires and cloistered gardens, university education came to the city late: in the last quarter of the 20th century. It had won its spurs in the arts and architecture, but today Maastricht is very much a university town.

Walking around in the university quarter, flanking the Tongersestraat, the students are easily recognizable and numerous. What is surprising though, is that you will hear them speaking not only Dutch and of course English, but in very many cases, German and even Chinese.

There is no conflict between town and gown in Maastricht. The city wears its academic gown lightly. Despite the heavyweight reputation being gained in worlds as far apart as cardiovascular research, European law and international business studies, academic excellence does not weigh the place down. Joie de vivre reigns and the university is the most popular in the Netherlands.

The Players
The scholars are there of course and this, not so fortuitous, synergy of circumstance makes it highly appropriate for Maastricht to herald the summer’s events (listed at the link under Maastricht-Europe.com) relating to the Dutch presidency with Forum Maastricht. This forum is to consider European progress in respect of deliberations in Lisbon and Bologna, as we have noted, and indeed, the interfaces between the state, the university and the economy.

The principal players who will debate issues relevant to these topics have themselves played key roles in the development of the same issues in political and academic arenas. The university president Jo Ritzen, a long-time Dutch Minister of Education and vice-president of the World Bank, with broad experience of all three worlds and schooled in the academies of Europe and the US, is well placed as an interlocutor on the topic of university research, its funding and its spirit.

Luc Soete, the distinguished professor of International Economics, and director of Maastricht’s MERIT Institute, came to Maastricht from Stanford more than a decade ago. Shortly afterwards he caused a furore with an article in The Economist discussing his proposal of a bit tax on the pre-spam, e-economy.

It is not, however, just when he hits the headlines that Professor Soete becomes a source of information and advice in the world of economics. He was working behind the scenes on the original Lisbon objectives, advising the Dutch PM Wim Kok and the Portuguese PM Antonio Gutiérrez.

Of course, Messrs Ritzen and Soete are the home team joined by the current Minister of Education, Maastricht’s own Maria van der Hoeven, and Professor Hildegard Schneider with her special knowledge of law as it relates to nationality. Maastricht’s headline-grabbing mayor, Gerd Leers will be there too.

The color is not merely local. That celebrated 68er, Danny-le-Rouge will be present - although unfortunately not in a clinch with Mme Marine Le Pen, as recently on French TV. This, of course, is Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the Franco-German Green guru and MEP.

Special knowledge of the new EU member states comes from Jaroslaw Pietras, Polish Deputy Chief Negotiator during that country’s EU accession negotiations. Romualdas Kalonaitis, a Lithuanian Ambassador at large, and labor market expert, will also be on hand; as will Andras Inotai, Director General of the Institute for World Economy in Budapest, whose personal experience ranges all the way from South America to North Germany.

Phedon Nicolaides, a Cypriot and expert on regulatory affairs, is already based in Maastricht and will contribute his insights. Another long-term EU expert, almost avant la lettre, is Helen Wallace, currently at the European Institute in Florence and Director of the Sussex Institute for Contemporary European Studies. She is a recent co-author of a monograph on Poland.

The Red Baroness Tessa Blackstone, who formed, or as some might say deformed, the contemporary British educational system will be at the Maastricht Forum too. A contributor of singular distinction will be the EU Commissioner for scientific research, Philippe Busquin. Business will be represented by senior executives from Nokia and Shell.

The scene is set; the dramatis personae are assembled. We have also provided a framework for their deliberations above. The notes that follow come from Luc Soete, Jo Ritzen and Hildegard Schneider, but perhaps M. Busquin should start the ball rolling, rather than ‘kicking off’.

The Issues
As M. Busquin said, recently in Liège, ‘if we want to create a more dynamic knowledge economy in Europe, we have to encourage the universities; because, one thing is certain, economic growth is not going to continue to depend on industry. Research itself will produce the new jobs. We need our labs to compete rather than repeat the same thing all over the place. We need to add value to the teams who deliver the best performance,’ he said. He referred also to Maria van der Hoeven, who said that excellence means teamwork.

Partnerships for innovation between business and the academic world should be envisaged, while guarding against interference with academic independence. M. Busquin let it be known that the EU would be creating a European research agency to finance fundamental research on the basis of excellence. Fiscal relief would, of course, play its role - Ireland had demonstrated that this worked in encouraging research funding.

Jo Ritzen’s views may be broadly summarized as follows:
EU synergies would clearly give young people better prospects; although, there is little understanding of this at present; despite the fact that, on the supply side, Europe has a lot to offer in education.

Transparency and clarity have been provided by the Bachelor-Master degree structure, a Bologna Declaration proposal, which assures reciprocal university diploma recognition. However, top students still go to the US for their PhDs. The US has less red tape, more money and a more open approach to the exchange of ideas.

In Europe, attitudes have to change. This is not effected by legislation; a shared policy is required. The Schutten commission, in the Netherlands, appeals for decentralization and deregulation, while at the same time promoting centralization and regulation.

Private giving is needed too. In Maastricht, Mr Ritzen is going to try to create the right conditions and setting to encourage private giving. Fundraisers have already been employed and the prospects are good.

There is a great deal of research in Europe, though it often overlaps. In Meuse-Rhine, EUR 1-2 billion has been invested in research and training, although the outcomes are somewhat disappointing and many studies are carried out without any cross-fertilization. Research has to be better organized and funded.

In the Eindhoven, Louvain, Aachen and Maastricht area, Philips and others see an opportunity for major synergies. It looks as if the priority is for Europe to get its act together.

The broader economic framework is addressed by Luc Soete. Rather than just positing a trade-off between social welfare and cutting edge research, he explains the culturally rooted nature of the differences between approaches to research in the US and Europe within the context of the achievement of the Lisbon objectives.

He says too that the EU Barcelona target of 3% of GDP spent on R&D is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for bridging the income or productivity gap between the EU and the US.

‘European researchers, he says, ‘are motivated by different intrinsic factors in their careers than US researchers, which is why the public sector exerts a stronger pull in Europe. The trade-off mentioned above, between innovation and security will not disappear.’

Solutions
‘A ‘European research area’ will best be achieved by strengthening the public, fundamental research sector in Europe focusing, among other things, on fiscal incentives, immigration and the intra-European mobility of researchers’, says Luc Soete.

Parenthetically, both Norbert Walter, Chief Economist of the Bundesbank and the new President of Germany, former IMF head, Horst Koehler, recommend making babies to solve our economic problems.

A current estimate of the annual inflow of immigrants to Europe is 600,000. This apparently will not serve to replace Europe’s ageing population. Accordingly, despite popular concerns about Balkan bandits and Islamic fundamentalists, there is no question of turning the tap off.

Immigration and integration are issues that Hildegarde Schneider puts forward as a solution to the problem of fresh blood. ‘The EU should not become Fortress Europe for its new neighbors’, she says. EU enlargement is not going to solve the problem of the demographic deficit. Immigration will have to come from Third Countries and it is, in fact, only with increased immigration that the European social model can be achieved.

Looking at a fundamental basis for ordering European affairs, Hildegarde Schneider said that although the Treaty exists as a basic document, the failure to accept a constitution would be seen as the symbol of failure.

If the constitution were rejected in referenda throughout the EU, 50 years of economic and political success would be crowned by defeat; a political association of 25 countries is too big to get along without a constitution. The linguistic imperfections of the document are not sufficiently serious to be an impediment to its eventual ratification - albeit with some editorial amendment. ‘Europe has been stabilized and is peaceful. It should not be allowed to fall at the last fence,’ says Professor Schneider.