 So we're here in Tesserunikia, the Nanotechnology Conference, and who are you? I'm George Katalagari Anakis. I have been working with the European Commission for almost 30 years, and until the end of last year I have been responsible for the problem of the safety of nanomaterials. So, with the EU Commission, 30 years. What does that mean? Yeah, it's building actually the European Research Program. It started from very tiny budgets, joined the Commission Framework Program 2, and completed Framework Program 7, and then Horizon 2020. Also a little bit of preparation of Horizon Europe. It was a fascinating road. So what's the Horizon 2020 and Horizon, what do you call it, Europe 2? Horizon Europe. That's the program that will start in 2021. And Horizon 2020, that was a 7-year program, which started back in 2014, and in 2020 it's going to be completed. And I see it mentioned many places. So this is like a research fund? What is it? Yes, indeed. It's a research fund which covers the responsibility of the European Union, the European Commission is the executive arm. It covers the funding of scientific research from basic research, fundamental research, some people call it to industrial application, and it covers practically everything from, name it, astrophysics, and human capital to industrial technology, and investment for industry competitiveness and sustainability. I must say that the member states also have big investments in research, so somehow the European Commission brings together all this to shape the European Union scientific community. So it's very important for the EU, for Europe to invest in the right stuff, because that's the future, right? Absolutely. And so this is a big deal? Yeah, it's a big deal and it allows to have a presence in global matters regarding science and technology and the well-being and the environment, the health of the citizens, and the workforce, and have long enough perspectives, long-term research which is expected to improve our societal needs from the next maybe eight, ten years and further. So how does it work? Why is it the best way to do it through the EU? Because this allows cooperation among research teams from different member states. Before the EU research used to be local, used to be funded by member states, separately. The EU allows different competencies to come together. Sometimes different scientific schools of thought, sometimes cross-sectors, and most importantly, maybe allow the European Union to speak with one voice and cooperate with other big forces, other big areas like the United States, and Canada, and China, and Japan. So there is European research is actually a bigger thing than the sum of its parts. So I guess there's a ways to just say that it's already been huge successful, right? Oh yes, since the very start there has been methods and procedures for exposed evaluation, feedback, control of progress. It has been under a very good model of governance, I may say. And so, I mean, I'm hopeful to see even more. There's been this Parliament election recently, a lot of people voted, and many people want green technologies, right? Is there, I don't know if you're able to say it, but in theory one could think there should be much increased? Of course, of course. I mean, this is a must where societal concerns have been a guiding rule since decades. But recently in the Lisbon Treaty at the end of the first decade of this century, this also took a legal content. So the Lisbon Treaty foresees that the civil society must have better role, must be addressed, their concerns must be addressed in the acts of the European Union. And indeed, the European Parliament is representing the people. And it's a major platform for expression of the concerns, the future concerns of the society. So we are looking, I mean, we are no longer the commission as I said before, but I think the scientists and the management of the science is looking to such concerns with increasing attention. So I expect, as you say, major progress in the next, in the future. Because we Europeans, we have our way of thinking of being, right? The Americans are doing their things, let's say, I don't know if it's okay to say, it's kind of very commercial and the Chinese are doing their thing. So humanity is hoping to see some massive improvements in many technologies, like nanotechnology. So we need to speed things up, right? Yes, but we have some values that are common. I mean, it's not long ago, in the United States, President Obama spoke about these common values, like freedom, rule of law, like justice, independent justice, democracy. All these values we see, we tend to call them Western values. In fact, they are ancient Greece values, so equality in front of the law, freedom. All these things are shared and we see that they are shared more and more. So I'm confident that this model, as I said, is 2,500 years old. So I'm confident that this will be more our guidance for the future. It's true that we differ sometimes in the way we look about entrepreneurship, the way we administer risk. For example, in the United States we have unlimited liability, in Europe we have the Napoleon system or the tort law. So there are things looked at differently, but basically I think we are on the correct line. Yes, of course we are compatible with them, but maybe we are a hope for faster innovation and faster investment in the right fields, hopefully. Yes. And to come with solutions for, let's say, the Green New Deal could be more European than American, potentially. Well, I think we are on a common route. Maybe we differ a little bit in the details, but if you look at societal concerns discussions in the States and societal concerns discussions in Europe, they are not very different. We are all there. We have the concerns about our planet. There are ups and downs, politics and so on. But if you look in the long term, the bigger picture is for, as you say, human well-being, democracy, rule of law, independent justice, freedom, liberty as it's called in the United States. So the big picture is quite optimistic, I may say. So there's a lot of things, but let's say green energy renewables, but also eliminating, let's say, cancer and arthritis and diabetes and all these problems. Clean air, I mean, this is going to Mars. How do we do all this? Well, if somebody would tell you that we would have now Internet and with a device of 100 euro, you could find your way on the streets and so on, you wouldn't really believe it. So I think we advance and we advance very fast. It's true that in the post-war environment, scientific environment, I mean, we did not really pay much attention to environmental concerns. Not that we did not have people spotting these challenges and these future troubles that we might have from not addressing environmental. But I think we changed the route on time. And the last decades of the 20th century environment took an enormous advance forward. So we identified the rules. It's true at the same time that the needs, especially for energy, went up and they were not met by adequate progress in the alternative sources of energy and so on. But again, all progress in the nuclear that were not adequately managed and we have had some major accidents there, chemical, as well, but these accidents have opened literally, have opened windows to look into the future and work on this with correct collaboration, correct funding, correct attention to the science. So safety, consumer safety, public safety, they are better addressed now than they were about 450 years earlier. So with your experience, how do we do best collaboration and collaboration is crucial, right? How's the best way? Oh, that's a tough question. Well, learning, I may say, defining the goals, governance. So defining our goals, sometimes we have conflicting goals. For example, we are transporting steel to Europe and steel from the United States to Europe and Europe to the United States, precisely the same steel or cement from one side to the world in the other and from that other to the first. So what do we do it? So our first target is to establish some consistency between our targets and where we have some inconsistency, smooth them out and then share information, try to communicate this information and then set essentially some plans, learning from the past and also speculating about the future. So planning, make a roadmap where we want to go and then some type of control if we are achieving any progress and in which terms we achieve this progress. In other words, managing our new complex system of innovation, governing it, preparing expert opinion and then feeding the decision-makers, decision-makers are necessarily political people but feeding them with the correct information from science is the key element in my view. So a co-operation rather in science is the most crucial step in that and that conveying this information in a correct way to policymakers and decision-makers that's also a crucial part. So we can take decision not based on feelings as sometimes we have seen in recent cases but rather on solid logic. Shouldn't the scientists be in charge more? It's not their role. They are not there to establish policies, take decisions and enforce them. How can you ask a scientist to penalize somebody that does not go by the rules? I mean they are not, it's not their role. That's role of the executive and the system of power we have put in place over decades or even centuries. So don't put on their shoulders responsibilities that they should not have. They should provide the knowledge, the logic as I said earlier but it belongs to other mechanisms of the society to put the rules, provide the tools of the implementation of the rules and then control those who for one reason or another do not really play by the rules. So the Horizon 2020, the Horizon Europe, is it possible that these help establish the next unicorns, those multi-billion dollar future, I guess, money makers but like, you know, does it help for that? Yes, I'm sure. I'm afraid we are not yet at that era of the unicorns. There is some road to reach this until we have a global scientific community that's a dream, we're not yet there. But yes, I think we are on the correct path.