Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
EUR
Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) is a public university in the Netherlands, with over 20000 students.
ID: 256691740170-29
Lobbying Activity
Response to European Innovation Act
2 Oct 2025
As a leading Social Sciences, Humanities (SSH) and Medical university, Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) shares its reflections and recommendations, based on expertise and experience in social innovation, humancentric innovation, and responsible use of technologies. We share ideas for impactful, human-centric, inclusive and socially responsible EU Innovation Act, ensuring that innovation delivers not only economic value, but also legitimacy, trust and broad societal value. 1. Definition of innovation: innovation includes not only technical, but also social, governance, organizational and policy innovations that create public value through improved governance, citizen engagement, or institutional effectiveness. However, they are excluded by the current definitions that emphasize patents and commercialization. EU Innovation Act should broaden the definition of innovation to explicitly include social, governance, organizational and policy innovations, alongside technological ones. 2. Embed participatory approaches and encourage nontraditional innovators such as (SSHA) universities, local governments, NGOs, and citizen groups in the design, testing and evaluation of innovations. The Act should stimulate capacity building through training, grant support, and advisory services for nontraditional innovators who face higher barriers, and should support diffusion and adoption via small grants or vouchers to help municipalities, NGOs and smaller firms adopt tested innovations. 3. We support the idea of an innovation stress test for EU policies and propose that it assess not only economic but also social, ethical and environmental impacts. A holistic approach is needed to ensure that innovation is not only accelerated but also trusted, accepted, responsible and beneficial to society. The Innovation Act could introduce innovation impact assessment frameworks that will help innovators identify, at very early stage, the societal, ethical and environmental impacts, benefits and risks, enabling them to build trust and adoption pathways. 4. Support inclusive talent development: Talent attraction and retention cannot be reduced to financial incentives. Europes ability to innovate and scale depends on a broad spectrum of basic, advanced and transversal skills and SSHA universities are key to cultivating them. The Innovation Act should explicitly recognize the importance of SSHA-trained talent alongside STEM and should ensure access to innovation training and mobility opportunities for underrepresented groups and regions. 5. Ensure open access to SSH research infrastructures (e.g., ODISSEI-type data platforms, behavioral labs, governance testbeds) with dedicated access schemes for academic, social and civic innovators (incl. municipalities, NGOs, and civic tech groups), like existing programs for technology infrastructures. 6. Create regulatory sandboxes and safe experimentation spaces accessible also to SSHA universities, SMEs, NGOs and civic tech groups, not only to large tech firms. 7. Expand innovation-friendly public procurement for SSHA solutions, and adopt broader, more qualitative metrics of impact that capture societal value as well as economic return. Member States should commit to allocating a certain % of public procurement to innovation procurement, with specific provisions for social innovation and civic tech. 8. The Act should introduce blended finance, EU-level guarantees and social innovation adoption vouchers to de-risk investment. Pan-European investment platforms pooling public, private and impact capital would strengthen diffusion across borders. 9. Enable bridge funding mechanisms addressing the "valley of death" problem. 10. Establish adaptive governance and inclusive monitoring and reviewing mechanisms to ensure the Act remains adaptive, inclusive and responsive to societal needs (incl. stakeholder panels and societal metrics (inclusion, trust, equity).
Read full responseMeeting with Maria Noichl (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur)
4 Jul 2025 · Animal transport
Response to Delegated Regulation on data access provided for in the Digital Services Act
10 Dec 2024
The Digital Services Act provides a systemic risk management framework (arts. 34 and 35, DSA) ensuring compelling access to data from very large online platforms, and very large online search engines, without undue delay ((art. 40(12) DSA)) to vetted researchers, to be used for research purposes that contribute to the detection, identification and understanding of systemic risks. The Digital Services Coordinator of establishment, or the Commission, may require access to or reporting of specific data, including data related to algorithms, in order to appropriately monitor and assess the compliance of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines with the obligations laid down by the Digital Services Act (recitals 96 - 98, DSA). Researchers may also submit their application to the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State of the research organisation to which they are affiliated (art. 40(9), DSA). In order for vetted researchers to conduct meaningful and trustworthy research, we recommend to have a few additional aspects clarified: 1 Unclear Implementation of Article 40(12) While Article 40(12) of the DSA allows researchers to access publicly available data on very large online platforms and very large online search engines online interfaces, the practical implementation of this provision remains uncertain with regards to: The extent to which researchers can rely on Article 40(12) for automated data collection methods like web scraping Whether VLOPs will open their APIs to facilitate data access as recommended by some organizations We understand that addressing these matters with the very large online platforms and very large online search engines is within the discretionary authority of the Digital Services Coordinator. 2 Limited Scope of Research The DSA restricts data access to research that contributes to detecting, identifying, and understanding systemic risks in the EU. This limitation may exclude valuable research topics that fall outside this scope. Note that if the research design requires this, the vetted researcher should link own datasets to the accessed data from the very large online platforms, and very large online search engines, for for research purposes that contribute to the detection, identification and understanding of systemic risks. 3 Cooperation very large online platforms and very large online search engines may be reluctant to provide comprehensive access to their data, and define de facto restrictions in the context of protection of personal data, the protection of confidential information, in particular trade secrets, and maintaining the security of their service (see: art. 40(2), DSA). Also the aspect of reasonable compensation for very large online platforms and very large online search engines is not mentioned in the Digital Services Act. So it is noted that the vetted researcher shall not be charged costs for data access.
Read full responseMeeting with Jean-Eric Paquet (Director-General Research and Innovation)
23 Nov 2020 · Strategic session – EU funding strategy