PRIME - Policies for Research and Innovation in the Move towards the European Research Area

PRIME stands for Policies for Research and Innovation in the Move towards the European Research Area. These policies are facing major transformations. The first relates to the changing dynamics of knowledge production, with the new "search regime" of the new leading (NBIC) sciences, and with the research intensification of many industries and services. The second is linked to the changing relationship between science and society, with the burgeoning of controversies and public debates about priorities and research practices (such as GM field trials). The third concerns the growing importance of both regional and European public authorities. This means that one can no longer simply equate public intervention with national policy and that we must fundamentally reassess our accumulated knowledge on R&I policies.

To address these challenges, PRIME fosters the emergence of a lasting structure to integrate the efforts of leading researchers in the field. PRIME gathers 42 institutions, and within them 55 research groups and 230 researchers from four main disciplines: economics, sociology, political sciences and management. It is organised around 3 research foci: changing rationales for public intervention, the emergence of multi-actor spaces and the governance of S&T in Europe, the transformations of public sector research. The conditions for a lasting infrastructure on SI&I indicators at the European level is explored and tested.