“Check against delivery”
Director-General Gianotti, cara Fabiola,
Your Royal Highness,
Excellencies,
Distinguished guests,
It is such an honour to celebrate the 70th anniversary of CERN, together with some of the best and brightest minds in Europe and the world. Today, CERN is a magnet for top scientists from all continents. But as we just heard, there was a time when Europe was not at all an attractive place to do science. 70 years ago, many of our most brilliant scientists had fled Europe. Others had put their research on hold. It was a handful of European physicists who turned the tide and brought science back to Europe. This is how CERN was born and your founders would be so proud of CERN today. Today, you are welcoming 17,000 visiting scholars – every year. Basically, every physicist in the world wants to work at CERN. You have not only put Europe back on the map, you have become the centre of the world for particle physics.
There is so much we can learn from your history. Just like 70 years ago, we live in times of rising geopolitical competition. We are in the midst of a global race for the technologies that will shape the world of tomorrow, from clean tech to quantum, from AI to fusion. And while Europe is home to more researchers than both the US and China, we are losing ground in many fields. For instance, our global share of patent applications has been cut in half in the last two decades – from 30% to 15%. This has to change for the better. It is time to turn the tide, just like the CERN founders did 70 years ago.
Today, I would like to draw three lessons from the story of CERN. The first one is that scale matters. No European country alone could have built the world’s largest particle collider. CERN has become a global hub because it rallied Europe. And this is even more crucial today. We are competing with giants. China is planning a 100-kilometre- accelerator, to challenge CERN’s global leadership. Therefore, I am proud that we have financed the feasibility study for CERN’s Future Circular Collider. This could preserve Europe’s scientific edge, and it could push the boundaries of human knowledge even further. As the global science race is on, I want Europe to switch gear.
To do so, European unity is our greatest asset. Horizon Europe is the largest research investment programme in the world. Its crown jewel is the European Research Council – that financed research that resulted in 14 Nobel Prizes. We must invest in this. This is why I want to increase research spending in our next budget. But I also want to make it easier for you to access this funding. We have to focus our efforts on breakthrough innovation, as proposed by the Draghi report. Our scientists must be able to find the resources they need – right here in Europe.
The second lesson of CERN is that if you want to compete more, you have to collaborate more. All your discoveries are open access. You proudly share them with a huge network of universities, industries and start-ups. It is in this spirit that we will propose a European Research Area Act. All European researchers should be able to access our world-class research infrastructure, like supercomputers. It must be easier to pool expertise and computational power, with no artificial borders and barriers. Europe’s economy thrives because of the free movement of goods, talent and capital across our Single Market. It is time to finally allow the free movement of knowledge and science, all across Europe.
And this leads me to the third lesson. Your core mission at CERN has always been fundamental research. But all along your history, you have produced countless positive spillovers for our society and economy. It is thanks to CERN that we have the world wide web. It is thanks to CERN that we have touch screens. It is thanks to CERN that we have new tools for fighting cancer. You are constantly working with European industries, to build low-emission airplanes, or to create new solutions to transport liquid hydrogen. CERN is the living proof, that science fosters innovation, and innovation fosters competitiveness. We need more of these partnerships between research and business; more ideas that go from the laboratory to the factory. And this will be an important pillar of a new European Innovation Act. We must put research and innovation at the heart of Europe’s economy.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
When CERN was created, it seemed almost impossible to bring world-class science back to a devastated continent. When you designed a 27-kilometre underground tunnel, where particles would clash at almost the speed of light, many thought you were daydreaming. And when you started looking for the Higgs boson, the chances of success seemed incredibly low, but you always proved the sceptics wrong. Your story is one of progress against all odds, just like the story of Europe. You were born to discover. And I cannot wait to see what you will discover next because I am sure that once again, CERN will change the world.
Long live CERN, and long live Europe.
Source – EU Commission