4.1. Democratising Innovation Funding

DiEM25’s European Green New Deal proposes a Green-Investment-driven Recovery and a new agency for managing and funding Europe’s Green Transition and Green Energy Union. These measures make use of the risk-taking, mission-oriented funding powers of public institutions and put idle financial wealth to socially useful purpose by boosting a transition into a greener economy that works for the many.

The European Union is already a major funder and decision-making body shaping the research that affects our lives. In the ongoing program “Horizon 2020”, the EU aims to spend 80 billion € to fund research and innovation in the years 2014 to 2020. The following program “Horizon Europe” entails 100 billion € for research and innovation funding in the years 2021 to 2027.

While the programs are proposed by the European Commission and debated in the European Council and the European Parliament, the individual funding decisions are taken in a technocratic manner by Brussels bureaucrats, lobbyists and scientific experts. It gets even worse when we consider venture capitalists, whose deep influence on the start-ups and entrepreneurs pursuing creative new technologies pushes investment based on the short-termist and narrow pursuit of maximum profit.

We need to build alternative and democratic forms of funding research and innovation, so that the technologies of the future will be democratically determined right from the start. We have to put citizens in charge of the decisions that shape technology: research and innovation need to become accountable to citizens and their needs and expectations. This explicitly includes decision making by separate executive bodies as long as they are transparent, accountable and elected democratically.