 I'd like to be back at the World Economic Forum on this very chilly morning to discuss a topic that is near and dear to my heart, that is innovation in Europe and Europe's push to innovation. I am Luciana Alexandru, a partner at Sequoia Capital, a global venture capital firm, and focus on early-stage technology investing. I would argue that Europe is a powerhouse when it comes to science and research. And yet, sometimes we struggle to fully capture its economic output. We're here to discuss this topic and see what we could do about it. And I am honored to be joined by leaders in policymaking, government, the private sector, and research. So please join me in welcoming our wonderful panelists. And I will start with Mr. Dimitri De Vries, the CEO of Swiss Dutch Company, focused on health, nutrition, and beauty, DSM Firmani. Thank you for joining us. We're also joined by Nikolai Denkov, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Bulgaria, and a world-class scientist in his own right. We're also honored to be joined by Minister José Luis Escriva, the Spanish Minister for Digital Transformation and Civil Service. Thank you for joining us. We also have with us Commissioner Iliana Ivanova. She is the Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education, and Youth at the European Commission in Brussels. And Professor Maria Leptin, the President of the European Commission of Research, also in Brussels. Thank you to all of you for joining us today. Before we dive in, just a couple of housekeeping notes. There will be time for Q&A at the end of the session. So please save your questions until then. And secondly, should you wish to post on social media, please do not forget to use the hashtag WEF24. So let's dive right in. We will start with a question for all our panelists. And the question is the fundamental topic of today. If we look at Europe's STEM universities, STEM programs, we do well. If we look at the number of developers and technology in Europe compared to the US, the number is very similar. We do quite well there as well. And yet, on the other hand, if we look at outputs like GDP growth or productivity, which is another really important metric, we lag behind the United States. Where is the disconnect and what can we do about it? Commissioner Ivanova, may I ask you to start? Yes. Thank you, first of all, for putting this very important subject today in the agenda as a separate subject, no longer as part of another panel, but really to make the point, the strategic importance of research and innovation for our competitiveness, for our rush for innovation, and for us to get better. And let me start with a little bit more positive angle of the subject, because we have to acknowledge also that Europe has done a lot. And we have to recognize these achievements where we were a couple of years ago and where we are now and how vital research and innovation is for the competitiveness, for actually bringing all these important research and innovation to market. But that's where actually the gap lays. And since you asked the reasons where the bottlenecks are, I think first we have to look at how much we do invest in research and innovation in Europe. And that's been one of the messages I've been trying to push very hard for the decision makers to understand that as long as we are not committed to invest sufficiently in research and innovation, and we have to do that immediately today to prepare us for a better future, we will be lagging behind. And persistently for the past 20 years, we've observed a funding gap of about 100 billion per year in European research and innovation compared to others, and looking at this 3% of GDP threshold. So this is reason number one for me. We have to invest more. I'm glad we have prime ministers here today and really important decision makers that I'm sure we all understand. But sometimes we are not doing it in practice, really committing with European national budgets to stimulate and promote research and innovation. Second point, real quick, access to finance. Very important for SMEs, for startups. This is an area where we could improve. And bringing this excellent, Maria Leptin is here, this excellent research from the research and innovation phase to market to really deploy and scale up. This is in Europe where we have the so-called Valley of Death where you have all these nice discoveries, but somehow they are not able to find their place at the market. So here we have the European Innovation Council that is doing a great job and really pushing. Also access and the retainment of talent, another very important point. For me also being responsible for education, I think efforts have to be made also in that area. So real brief, these three areas, access to finance, scaling up and deployment, and attracting and retaining talent. Thank you so much. Those are very interesting topics, and I will come back to those topics, but would like to give everyone else a chance to answer the question. Minister Escriva. I think the commissioner has well identified a number of challenges that we have in Europe. I would say that there is a good sense of awareness among politicians, policymakers in Europe, about these bottlenecks and they need to unclog them. And I would identify four. Some of them have been already mentioned. One is the lack of risk-taking or too much risk aberration compared to the US. And for that I think from the public sector, and this is reflected, and you probably are aware of it, probably venture capital in Europe is not as much available as it should be. And from the public sector, we need to fill this gap. And we are doing so, actually, for a number of countries, relying, for instance, in the funds for the next generation, EU. And the way to do it is to adjust our public finance and institutions to venture capital-type approaches. Second, bottlenecks, which is very important sometimes, too much regulation or too much red tape. And I think we have the resolve to improve this. In the Spanish case, we have passed a specific law to encourage entrepreneurship and the origination and development of startups. Third, talent retention and talent attraction. And here we don't shy away from rewarding more talent and success in Europe than we do it. And I think this is fully compatible with our policies of income redistribution and fighting against, sometimes, it is presented as a droid-off, and I think it's not. You can continue having our cohesion policies in Europe compared to the US, and at the same time, to do more in rewarding talent and success that we do it. And then transfer of knowledge from the academia, from the research centers, to private activities. And here, we need to focus more on incentive-driven approaches than, I think, can be enhanced and ready. Thank you so much, Minister. And yes, a final word, more Europe. In the United States, one of the advantages is a huge single market on the financial sector, on the labor market. So I think there is still room, and we are doing a lot of things in this direction to complete our market, our single market, in the financial sector, in the labor market, in other areas. And I think by doing so, Europe will be able to catch up. Thank you, Minister. Mr. De Vries, with a private sector hat, what would you add? Maybe two things. I think it's not a theme which is new. I still remember reading a book from one of the professors in Asia, Kishore Mabobami, who basically said, the world has three blocks. Asia is the growing part. A lot of investments go there. The US is the second part, with great technology, with great talents, but certainly also an advantage in terms of energy transition cost-wise. And then we have Europe, who's stuck in the middle, and he described Europe as the museum of the world. People like to go there, like to visit. But if you really want to do something, you go somewhere else. You go where the growth is or where the technology is. That was 10 years ago. And we still have that issue. I think two things I would like to add to the discussion. One is, why is that? It's not because we have a lack of research or innovation talent or capability. I think we do have that in Europe. But we think that if we are intensive in knowledge, the rest will come. That's a mistake. You need to add scale-up. You need to add startup. You need to have manufacturing to it. Because if you do R&D and science and research, not by definition, the rest will come. It's the other way around. Whether there's economic activity, the science and research can be intensified. So that's one. Secondly, I think Europe needs to make choices where to play. And we want to play everywhere. And we need to play on these areas where it makes a difference, where we have differentiation. And we need to work together, public, private, to make that work. And I think there are a few examples, but we need to make more selective choices on where to play. Where do you think we should play? Bio-science. We need to play in some of the technology advantages and food in agro. And I'm slightly biased because I've been the company there. But I really think that's the case. Thank you so much, Mr. De Vries. Professor Lepton. Well, we've heard ideas about what's not working. I would actually challenge the premise. I think the premise of this session is I can read it out here. Europe is a world leader in science and research. So I think we should ask, are we? We've been saying this since the middle of the last century. But what does it mean? And how confident can we be about this? We have the talent. I have no doubt about that. We see it. We see it at the ERC, European Research Council, by the way, not European Commission. I'm not the president. She's speaking a little later. That's fine, just to get that straight. And do we give that talent enough freedom, enough infrastructure, the structure and the funding to do their best work? So the ERC was founded 17 years ago to do just that, to give freedom and good support to the very best minds in Europe. And I think it's been a success. I don't claim that success. The Commission can claim that success. And of course, this is part of our commissioners portfolio. The ERC has led to research done at the ERC, has led to the foundation of 400 startups in Europe. More than 44% of projects from the ERC lead to outputs that are cited in patents, even though they're not selected for it, even though this is fundamental blue sky research, including the humanities, arts, et cetera, nevertheless. So it shows that putting money into this kind of fundamental research does lead to great outputs. Europe has the talents. But if we look at the number of high output publications in Europe, high impact migration, whether you like that word or not, doesn't matter, we lag behind. We lag behind the US and China, who have similar size economies. And of course, we lag behind in investment. The European research area, we've talked about that for over 20 years. 3% GDP spending on R&I not happening in Europe. You've just mentioned it would need $100 billion a year. I hope some of that will appear in the next framework program. So we have been overtaken by China. US leads simply only just in money spent on R&A. So I think we do still need to provide more support for our young scientists and for researchers. Try to support innovation and more apply research. We do need to make Europe the best place to do science. Somebody's mentioned loss of talent, brain drain away from Europe. We need to continue to counteract that. And even if we may have been the best in the past, I think that's slipping away from us and we can't be complacent. Science and innovation are, so primary research and innovation are very closely linked. And I think we need to support them both. Taking away money from one to feed the other would be the wrongest thing and would set us up for a long-term decline. So I, of course, in my position have to say this, making sure that the best talent stays here and has the best condition here is the essential part of the pipeline to feed innovation. Thank you so much, Professor Lepton. And I do want to come back to the loss of talent, which Commissioner Ivanova mentioned as well. And it seems to be a common theme. But I would like to give Prime Minister Denkov an opportunity to answer the question first as well. Yeah. So first, I entirely agree that Europe was leading science power, let's say, in the 60s, 70s, 80s of the last century. But then what happened was that the states, Asia, realized, I think, faster than Europe, that we should not oppose the fundamental science, basic science, to the applied science. So they combined them faster. They put the funding and the promotion of science where you create positive results that can be put on the market. You can make money. And this is the moment where I think they succeeded to be faster in the innovation in making money. And then to attract the talents that we have in Europe that they had in China, in the other countries, and attracted them. So they developed their ecosystem of science linked to innovation faster than Europe. So I think we realize this problem. And I want to say, as a scientist, as a person that was working with the ERC for years, that this was really a world example how the basic fundamental science can be supported at the public level. But at the same time, we struggled for years to create an analog for the basic science in the innovation. And I'm still not sure that Europe has succeeded to do this. And I think there are several reasons that we have to work still on. The first one is to realize that, as in science, it's the same innovation to have a successful product, scientific or innovative product. You need to make experiments, attempts. And most of them are failures. Well, in some way, in our mentality, in our funding, it was implemented the idea that you have to succeed immediately. It is something that we are now changing, but it takes time. The second point is the public-private partnership. Again, we were later in Europe. There is a progress, but I can easily show a difference in the two approaches. Let's say in the thermonuclear power efforts to get energy. Europe chosen, either, as a model. Big funding, big project, very difficult to implement. And for years, we are struggling even to see the end of this project. Well, in the other countries, they choose the modular approach because it's cheaper. It's faster. You can make experiments. You can fail many times, but at the end, there is a chance that you can get faster, although at a smaller scale. So these are the type of lessons that we're learning now in Europe. And I think we are getting there, but we started a bit late in this. And the regulation is a big part of it because the regulation, it doesn't allow you to make these experiments. You have no chance to compete with the others. Thank you so much, Prime Minister. I hear a few themes that come up, and I'd love to dig into those. European talent, how do we keep European talent in Europe? Public and private funding for R&D on the one hand and for startups and scale-ups on the other hand. A culture where failure is not well received. Those are some of the topics that seem to come up consistently. So maybe we can start with talent. And I found a very interesting stat. If we look at US universities, a third of AI researchers in US universities come from Europe. That stat made me both proud and sad because we'd love to keep European talent in Europe. And Minister, you seem to be nodding. May I ask for any view on how we can keep European talent in Europe? OK. There's one issue on migration laws, actually. Initiatives from the Commission and at the European white level for the blue card initiatives are policies that are moving in the right direction. But still, I mean, we need to offer a single label market in Europe with a faster mobility than the one we can offer now from the outset. So I think there is still room from high-skilled workers and talented workers in Europe to offer more a European-wide perspective in terms of opportunities and labor. And I think we are working in this direction. There are a number of initiatives. The single permit direction, for instance, from the Spanish presidency is a case in point. But I think we need still to work more in this direction. And I said before, we need to reward more talent. And Europe, there is a tendency to equate. And sometimes we are reluctant to reward strongly talent and success because of this culture of equating. And I think that, as I said before, that if we want to be really competitive here, we have to be more ambitious in this direction. Thank you so much. Professor Lebson, do you have a research-specific view? Well, your statistic is interesting. I will add a little bit to that statistic. I think it's good that one third of researchers in the US are European. We should try and do the same. And I'll tell you the bit of statistic that I want to mention is that those countries or among those countries that do best in attracting ERC grants are those that have the highest number of foreign researchers. UK, Netherlands, and Switzerland. I'm sure you'll find institutions in those. We have Swiss Ministry here. I'm sure she'll confirm it. In those, that also can boast 30% foreigners. And those do best. And not only that, those foreigners apply more to the ERC for top-level grants. And once they've done that, they're more successful than their national counterparts. So brain circulation is really good. And so we should do more of that. We should be more welcoming. We should create, that's what I've been saying, we need to create a better infrastructure. You also see that the funding that the ERC provides does that. I was in Slovenia recently. A top-level astronomers had come back from UC Davis. So one of those numbers in your statistics to go back home to set up her lab and her research there with an ERC grant. So we can do it. We can get these people. We don't need to get them back. We can get ours back. But we can also get foreigners in. Provide the right infrastructure, the flexibility, the mobility throughout Europe, as you say. We're not doing enough there. Again, postulates from era from more than 20 years ago and we're still not there. We still do not have a researcher passport for all of Europe. We cannot take our pensions from one country to another. We would all, the scientists would all love to move back and forth. I have many colleagues still not working. So the red tape, the borders for research and brain circulation are still too strong. Do we have numbers on how many people go back or stay? Because I think the success of the US is that they attract a lot of talents and they stay. Yes, yes, yes. And we don't get enough. And we need to attract talents who also stay in Europe. And it's not because the environment is not beautiful. They're only beautiful. I mean, we had a few researchers who really wanted to stay in Europe. But they went back. Because the center of success, the gravity, was bigger in the US. And we do it all locally. So I'm fully promoting your science passport because it's really needed. Success attracts success. But also locally, individual countries, we in Europe have to do more in making mobility possible. Individual countries have to do more in being attractive. So those countries I mentioned, teaching is in English. So it's easy for people to come in. The careers are very fluid. So if you're hired as a junior person, you can make it to higher levels. You're given independence as a very junior person. So there's a lot that can. And funding is great in all of these places. So we've got to do both individually, locally, and in Europe to get rid of boarders. Thank you, Professor Leptin. The other topic that came up was funding. And I assume we're talking about both public funding for R&D and also private funding for R&D and for startups. Mr. DeVries, may I ask you? If we look at European corporations that are innovative and that do invest in R&D, what can policymakers do to help them invest even more in research and development, which, again, has a percentage of GDP lags behind the United States? I think that's exactly the core question. Because if we want to fund more on science and research, because we think we need to fund more on science and research to make the stats go well, that's wrong. Because it needs to have a purpose on why you intensify science and research. So I think what we need to do is make choices. And I said it earlier, we need to choose where to play. And we play here and we don't play here. We intensify science and research here. For instance, bioscience as an example. You need to choose where to play where you have a leadership position. Because if you put a lot of science and research in where you play as number 10, forget it. It's not going to work. It will not be sustainable. Thirdly, you need to invest in where you can differentiate yourself. And it needs to be scalable. Because if you are fantastic in enzymes for biosciences for insect proteins, it's beautiful. But it's a one billion market. It doesn't move the needle. So it needs to be scalable. And we're discussing a little bit venturing and startups. It's great to put money there. But if the total market is 100 or a billion, it doesn't move the needle for Europe. So play where it's scalable and sizable. And last but not least, in this panel, it needs a profit. At the end of the day, if you only do it to enable stuff, it's going to die. Because it needs profit to invest, reinvest, and continue that. And I think there we need to help each other. Public, private, choose where to play and find a model which is scalable and profitable over time. May I ask, since it's 2024, should we play in artificial intelligence? Yeah, I actually agree partially. But I think we have to distinguish between the funding coming from the public sector and the funding that is a combination of public and the private. So I think the public sector in ERC is an example for this. Should select some of the most promising and most high technologies that are not obviously fundable by the business. And AI was one of them just a few years ago. Now it is different. But now it is different because there was a funding years ago. Another example could be the brain research that is not immediately giving money. But who knows how the brain works? Then they have a big advantage how to develop technologies for many medical applications and even, again, linking to the artificial intelligence, how we can make what we know from the biology to what we understand from the artificial intelligence research. At a certain point, these two will merge. It's not obvious today how this will happen. But I'm sure this will happen when we want to develop the next level of artificial intelligence that is not only large language models, but it is thinking us that our brain is thinking. So this type of topics like space technology, for example, there should be first picked by the politicians, by the, of course, in discussion with the scientists. And they have to be publicly funded. But with a clear understanding that after 5, 10, 15 years, they should be transferred for more massive funding by the private sector. And actually, the Netherlands was an example of that. They created some years ago 10 institutes in 10 core areas. And they said, OK, we'll fund you for 10 years. But after that, you should work with the companies. And this is the way of thinking, I think, at the different scales. We have to implement, because initially, you need the public funding to create a scientific and innovation area. But after that, you should leave this to the market to develop. And again, just this last sentence is that, again, we can make some example of the states for the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, that they're funding a lot of research with a clear understanding that first you need the public funding. And then you can make money after some level of development of the technology. So these are the type of transfer of the public into private hands that we have to learn better to do. Thank you. A short comment in Europe. In this second stage, with the private sector, need to be the major player. One problem that I identify in Europe is that we have a financial system, because most of it needs to be channeled through a financial system. And in Europe, we have a very bank-arised financial system compared to the US, which is much more capital market-oriented with venture capital. So here we have a problem in Europe that we lack institutions that really are prepared to take risks, which is what you need in this respect. So I think still we have a problem at the European level in terms of having a single capital market that is comparable to the one in the US in terms of risk-taking. And we need from the public sector to work more in order to encourage that. I'm happy to say that at Sequoia, we're very much open for business in Europe. And we opened an office here three years ago, exactly for that purpose. But Commissioner Ivanova, may I ask you, is AI a big topic for you and for the new innovation agenda of Europe? Of course, AI and high-performance supercomputing are really huge and important elements that research and innovation is entirely part of that basis for the developments, and they're developing really fast. So that's why I said in the beginning that there is this sense of urgency that was last week the most used word within our commission discussions that we really need to act very fast, because artificial intelligence is developing faster than we can actually act, especially with our decision-making process in the EU. That makes things a little bit more complicated. But on the positive side, I can say that the new European innovation agenda has delivered already. We had put 25 actions together to address the funding gap, the access to finance, this regulatory framework where I heard a lot. We need really to speed up in this experimental phase and then give more opportunities for the companies to test more and to do it fast and at a larger scale. And that came up as also a big part of yesterday's discussion. So here, we've done a lot also with the proposals to increase the regulatory sandboxes initiatives on talent, such as the deep tech talent initiative. So a lot has been done, but am I happy? As a former auditor, I cannot say I can be content because as things evolve so fast, we have to continue. This is not a step. It was a good initial proposal that was put up, but it's just the start. It's a process that we have to continue. And obviously, the areas that were mentioned working more on scaling up and deployment, I will repeat again. But I think this is crucial because our venture capital market is six times smaller than the US. So if you leave only this European Innovation Council alone, which has 10 billion funding, it's a significant amount. But alone, it cannot address this huge gap that exists on the market. So for the moment, I'm happy to say that things have really gone well with the initial pilot phase. And we have funded more than 1 billion deep tech startups produced by EIC funding, already 13 unicorns companies with market value more than 1 billion. So these are good achievements, but is this enough? No, I think we have to continue with the efforts, especially on the regulation side. I know EU is the queen of regulation, but we also have to think about simplification and really making all these programs and the complexity of it a little bit more user-friendly, a little bit simpler, so that especially the SMEs could take full benefit of it. Those are great stats. Thank you for pushing for Europe. I would love to open it up for questions from our lovely audience. Yes, please. So, Jeff Richards, Director, AO Research Institute, Davos, you're talking about funding of research. You think it's not enough. I actually think the research funding is quite good. Free quarters of my funding comes from endowment that we have made from licensing patterns to the first trauma company synthesis in the world in selling patterns. And we bring in about a quarter through European funds, though the Swiss Bay at the moment, until we get this better. But that's for prestigiousness for our people. But the problem is not the research funding. Having many papers and patents is basically irrelevant apart from your CV. It's translating that to a product and even having a startup, most of them fail. It's getting the big companies to be interested. And unfortunately, unless the big companies see a difference of 30, 40% in what they're already doing on the cash cows they're doing, they're not interested in great technology. And where I'd like to see the Swiss and the Europeans move forward is supporting this. Everyone calls it the Valley of Death, but it's not the Valley of Death if we move it correctly. And we really need support from the patent, which is useless on its own, to the startup to then get the big companies to get that out there. Thank you so much for sharing that. Mr. De Vries, would you have any reactions? I partly agree, because I already said, I think it's not that we need to do more science and research, it's more that you need to add the scale up and the manufacturing. You had an interesting second point to it. Can you rely on the existing private business to do that? And the answer is definitely no, because they can protect what they have. So there the public-private combination comes into play because if we support this as the area to play, other businesses will come in either via new companies or the existing businesses wake up because they basically see that if they don't act, they will lose, right? And you need this tension. And I think in the U.S., they do that pretty quickly. I mean, Tesla is a nice example, but you've got most of them. ASML, Semiconductors, was a spin-off of Philips because they thought it was not important. Public-private put the pressure on it and said, listen, we need to play here, and now you see others coming up. This is something which we really need to work on. You can't rely on the existing private business. That's why centering, start-ups, scale-ups are important, but fully backed up by choices by governments that this is an area where we as Europe are going to play. And secondly, this cannot be country-by-country in Europe because it's too small. I think you promoted that, with the science and research, European passport. We really need to act as Europe. As a side note, I do think as Europe, we need to get a bit more freedom than more control because that's really from a private perspective. If you want to make a choice on where to innovate, you need to be pretty much based in Europe with the European mindset to decide for Europe, right? It's true. If we look at my company, where, for instance, our chief science and research officer is here, she's American, she looks at it from a neutral perspective. And then if we don't act as Europe, we have a disadvantage. If we don't change that, we're sitting here in the VEF Davos again in five years from now with exactly the same discussion. Thank you so much. On a positive note. Thank you. Please, if we could get a microphone. Thank you. Martina Hirayama, State Secretary for Education, Research and Innovation Switzerland. So, of course, I'm glad to hear about the importance of research and innovation in Europe, meaning not only the European Union, but Europe as a whole. I think it's important to stand together. We have big challenges, and it's important to go ahead together, but not only Europe. As we heard from you as well, it's important to cooperate in general with the US, with Asian countries. And my question is, Europe is defining more and more strategic areas, closing up in strategic areas. So, what is the perspective on the context of international cooperation in the strategic areas? Yes, thank you, Martina, for putting that question. First, let me say how pleased I am that we are expanding the list of our association countries. Negotiations are going on. This year, I hope more will join. And let me also underline that Horizon Europe is obviously one of the biggest public research programs in the world, but also one of the most open ones. We have participants from over 180 countries in Horizon Europe, so that is quite impressive. And I'm really happy that I can continue and promote this direction. This is also one of my priorities to increase this association list of countries. But on your question about putting some restrictions and looking more attentively to in which direction we move, yes, that's in line also with our new economic security strategy. And being as open as I mentioned, the research and innovation sector is also quite vulnerable. So we've come to the conclusion that we have to also put some effort in promoting but equally protecting and not being any longer naive due to some foreign interference, some leakages, transfer of knowledge to protect research security. And this is what we're going to do. But in full respect of academic freedom and institutional autonomy, this is what we're going to propose actually next week. But again, coming back to my personal priority for openness and then more associations, this will be in the coming year really on the top of my list. Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing. And I think we have time for one more question. If there is one more question. And yeah, please, thank you. I would like to go a little bit deeper on one of the comments of Minister Escriba about the way we have access and the bureaucracy around getting public funding on research. I believe that we may have a problem that things are too complicated on getting public funds. It takes a lot of time. There are a lot of intermediate steps in which you have to demonstrate everything that you are fitting within the goals and so on. So I would like more of the approach and we always put the example of the US. But in the US, things are faster and simpler. Of course, later on, if you do not comply with the conditions, then you have a problem. But if you try to demonstrate everything is clean and perfect along the whole process, things are very complicated. Innovation now is getting very fast. So we need to have a just no answer to let's say having access to funding as fast as possible and then not having too much bureaucracy along the way. So maybe who wants to make a comment on that? Thank you. Any quick reactions? I can try a very quick reaction. Thank you. In my experience, it was not the application the biggest problem. The biggest problem that I see is the way how the results of a research project or innovation project are evaluated. Typically it goes with a lot of administrative procedures. For me, when you fund some science or innovation, the only thing that matters is what are the final results. The rest is just details in the story. So if I have a recommendation, try to reduce the reporting focusing on the real scientific and innovation results. This would be my comment here. Can I just quickly add on that? Because I'm really grateful for that question. I'm very committed to that. As I said, coming from where I come, it is very important to simplify and alleviate that administrative burden. And we're doing that in the coming year in Horizon Europe. You will see a lot of simplification in all pillars, not only in pillar two, but also pillar one and pillar three. Less administrative burden, less reporting requirements, simplified cost options so that we can make your life easier. Thank you, commissioner. Thank you. Well, the good news is I think we all agree we have a lot of talent in Europe and this is the starting point. So let's all keep on pushing and not have the same conversation in five years from now. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.