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Marie Curie Alumni Association

MCAA

The non-profit purpose of the MCAA is to promote and exploit, in the broadest sense, the full potential of the community of researchers who have benefited in terms of mobility from the People programme of the “People” 7th Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013) (Council Decision L 400/272 dated 30.12.2006, and its corrigendum L54/91 dated 22.02.2007), its successors (in the future) and its predecessors (from past Framework Programmes) and to foster greater public awareness of European research.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Ana Vasconcelos (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur for opinion) and Institute for European Environmental Policy and

27 Jan 2026 · Performance Regulation

Meeting with René Repasi (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur)

4 Dec 2025 · MCAA Policy Forum 2025: Impact of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA). Driving knowledge, innovation and EU competitiveness

Response to EU’s next long-term budget (MFF) – EU funding for cross-border education, training and solidarity, youth, media, culture, and creative sectors, values, and civil society

25 Nov 2025

The Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), representing over 23,000 current and former Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) fellows worldwide, welcomes the European Commissions proposal to establish the AgoraEU Programme for 20282034. We support its ambition to consolidate and streamline key initiatives such as Creative Europe, Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV), and the European Solidarity Corps into a coherent framework that fosters democratic engagement, cultural diversity, creativity, and civic participation across Europe. The MCAA particularly welcomes the programmes explicit commitment to strengthening synergies with the future Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (FP10) and the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF). However, for AgoraEU to reach its full potential, these synergies must go beyond formal alignment. The MCAA underlines that education, research, and culture are deeply interconnected pillars of a democratic and knowledge-based Europe. Strengthening these connections requires structured mechanisms for cooperation between AgoraEU and FP10, ensuring that cultural and creative actors, civil society, and youth initiatives have genuine access to research results, innovation infrastructures, and mobility opportunities. The MCAA highlights that the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) provide a proven model of how mobility, skills development, and cross-sectoral collaboration can empower individuals, foster creativity, and strengthen Europes knowledge and innovation ecosystems. Integrating MSCA-inspired approaches into the AgoraEU programme would bridge research, education, and civic engagement, supporting a new generation of creative and socially responsible researchers, innovators, and cultural professionals. The MCAA also emphasises the importance of integrating Open Science and research integrity into the AgoraEU framework, ensuring that media literacy, cultural heritage, and civil dialogue benefit from transparent, accessible, and responsible knowledge-sharing practices. To maximise impact and coherence, the MCAA recommends that the European Commission: Ensure coherence and complementarity between AgoraEU, FP10, and the ECF, including joint calls, shared policy dialogues, and coordinated dissemination of research results. Integrate mobility and training opportunities inspired by the MSCA model, linking education, culture, and research. Embed science communication and public engagement as horizontal priorities, supporting democratic resilience and media literacy. Recognise cultural and civil society actors as key partners in the European Research Area (ERA), facilitating their participation in research-policy dialogues. Promote inclusiveness and accessibility, ensuring balanced opportunities for non-profit organisations and early-career professionals across Europe. The MCAA stands ready to support the European Commission in fostering a vibrant, knowledge-based and participatory Europe where education, research, culture, and civil society reinforce one another.
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Response to EU’s next long-term budget (MFF) – performance of the EU budget

11 Nov 2025

The Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), representing over 23,000 current and former Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) fellows worldwide, welcomes the European Commissions proposal for a simplified and harmonised performance framework for the future EU budget. We support the effort to enhance transparency, accountability, and comparability across programmes and the creation of a Single Gateway to provide clear, accessible information on how EU investments deliver results. A coherent and evidence-based monitoring system is vital to demonstrate the effectiveness of EU spending in achieving strategic goals such as research excellence, competitiveness, sustainability, and gender equality. At the same time, the MCAA emphasises that performance assessment in research and innovation (R&I) must recognise the diversity and complexity of scientific work, where results often unfold over time and cannot be captured through a narrow set of metrics. The MCAA therefore calls for a balanced combination of quantitative and qualitative indicators, ensuring that one size does not fit all in measuring research impact. Beyond traditional output-based metrics (e.g. publication counts or citations), evaluation should include broader dimensions of impact. This approach should reflect the evolving principles of responsible research assessment, as promoted by the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). The MCAA welcomes the mainstreaming of horizontal principles, including the Do No Significant Harm (DNSH) principle, gender equality, and climate objectives, and encourages the inclusion of open science, inclusiveness, and research integrity as additional guiding values for performance tracking. To strengthen the new frameworks relevance and fairness, the MCAA recommends that the European Commission: 1. Design inclusive and flexible indicators that combine quantitative data with qualitative evidence. 2. Adopt a long-term perspective, recognising that the benefits of R&I investments materialise progressively. 3. Ensure consistency with research assessment reform, promoting responsible evaluation practices that reward collaboration, openness, and societal engagement alongside scientific excellence. 4. Provide transparent, publicly accessible performance data through the Single Gateway, while upholding data integrity and privacy standards. In conclusion, the MCAA supports the development of a performance framework that moves beyond compliance and counting, towards learning, accountability, and improvement. A system that recognises both the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of research impact will more accurately reflect the true long-term value of EU investments in people, knowledge, and innovation, and help secure Europe's global leadership in science and research excellence.
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Response to EU’s next long-term budget (MFF) – EU funding for competitiveness

11 Nov 2025

The Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), representing over 23,000 current and former Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) fellows worldwide, welcomes the European Commissions proposal to establish a European Competitiveness Fund (ECF) as an instrument to strengthen Europes strategic autonomy, industrial capacity, and technological leadership. We support the goal of streamlining funding instruments and fostering synergies between research, innovation, and business. However, scientific excellence and researcher-centred policies must remain the foundation of European competitiveness. Competitiveness is rooted in knowledge creation, talent development, and open collaboration, not solely in industrial performance. Any consolidation of programmes must preserve the autonomy and bottom-up nature of the EUs flagship research instruments, particularly Horizon Europes Pillar I: Excellent Science, which includes the European Research Council (ERC), MSCA, and Research Infrastructures. These programmes are globally recognised for nurturing top talent, advancing frontier science, and driving Europes innovation capacity. The proposed consolidation of 14 funding instruments under the ECF should not dilute or overlap with the objectives of the next Framework Programme (Horizon Europe), which must remain a standalone, ringfenced, and autonomous pillar dedicated to excellence-based research. The near absence of the MSCA in both the ECF proposal and its impact assessment is concerning. While the ERC is cited as the channel for fundamental research, overlooking the MSCA neglects its essential role in training, mobility, and researcher career developmentkey enablers of Europes long-term competitiveness and innovation. The MSCA, alongside the ERC, forms the backbone of Europes knowledge ecosystem and should be explicitly recognised in ECF governance and coordination structures. The MCAA welcomes the intention to create synergies between the ECF, Horizon Europe, and the Innovation Fund, but stresses that the ECF must complement, not subsume, the research-driven excellence underpinning FP10. Its role should be to scale up and deploy research results, while talent development and fundamental research remain the remit of dedicated programmes like MSCA and ERC. We also highlight the Seal of Excellence (SoE), mentioned in Annex 7 of the ECF Impact Assessment, as a bridge between research excellence and competitiveness. The fact that the largest share of SoE awards originates from MSCA proposals demonstrates both the programmes quality and the unmet demand for funding. The ECF should mobilise support for high-quality, unfunded MSCA and ERC proposals bearing the SoE, ensuring that Europe does not waste groups and communities talents of researchers or ideas. To ensure coherence and impact, the MCAA calls on the European Commission to: 1. Safeguard FP10s autonomy with a ringfenced budget exceeding 220 billion, including at least 25 billion for MSCA. 2. Maintain a clear division of purpose: FP10 for research and talent; the ECF for industrial scaling and strategic technologies. 3. Embed research talent and skills as a central competitiveness pillar. 4. Use the Seal of Excellence to fund high-quality, unfunded proposals. 5. Ensure coherence between the ECF, FP10, and ERA objectives, preserving excellence and avoiding duplication. The MCAA stands ready to collaborate with EU institutions and stakeholders to ensure the ECF reinforces, rather than replaces, the foundations of Europes competitiveness: excellent science, skilled researchers, and open, knowledge-driven innovation.
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Response to European Framework for Science Diplomacy

3 Nov 2025

The Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), a global network of 23,500+ researchers at all career stages, welcomes the proposed Council Recommendation on science diplomacy. It marks an important milestone in strengthening the EUs strategic, scientific, and geopolitical influence, while advancing multilateralism. As a bottom-up, researcher-led community active in 150+ countries, the MCAA embodies science diplomacy in practice. Through international mobility, interdisciplinary collaboration, and intercultural engagement, our members demonstrate how science builds trust, fosters shared knowledge, and supports European values worldwide. This feedback reflects the MCAAs research-driven vision and long-term commitment to enhancing Europes global role through science diplomacy, as further elaborated in the attached document. In recent years, research-driven policy and cooperation have demonstrated their potential to address global challenges, including climate change and the pandemic. Science diplomacy has become increasingly important for navigating foreign and security policy in a more fragmented world. It may even prove essential for the European Union and its Member States to remain competitive and safeguard their strategic autonomy in the light of the current geopolitical landscape. Although Member States may pursue their own science diplomacy activities in line with their strategic interests and priorities, it is also essential that they unify their voices to address global challenges effectively and compete with major players. On the one hand, intra-EU science diplomacy initiatives may enhance cohesion by reducing inequalities and brain drain as well as reinforcing the European Research Area. On the other hand, extra-EU efforts in science diplomacy may extend Europes influence globally, while promoting the UN's Sustainable Development Goals based on a research-driven approach. Science diplomacy actions must respect the division of competences between the EU and the Member States, particularly when dealing with foreign and security policy. Key challenges include striking a balance between openness and security, managing dual-use technologies and data protection, and safeguarding academic freedom. To this end, it is more than essential to bridge the cultural gap between policymakers, diplomats, and researchers through dedicated training pathways, evaluation tools, and resources that integrate researchers perspectives and guarantee their scientific freedom. Improving organisation and coordination among stakeholders is also crucial to enhancing science diplomacy at both the EU and national levels. A transparent and inclusive governance model, based on subsidiarity, trust, and alignment, is needed to connect the European Commission, Member States, research institutions, and diplomatic services. Inspiration should come from already existing bottom-up networks such as the MCAA and the EU Science Diplomacy Alliance, which effectively link scientific expertise with diplomacy. Including early-career and mobile researchers in the co-design process will improve the relevance, innovation, and diversity of the upcoming science diplomacy initiative, while ensuring their impact and accountability. Among the recommendations proposed in the report A European Framework for Science Diplomacy, numbers 3 Use science diplomacy to tackle global challenges and sustainably manage global goods and commons, 7 Create and connect science diplomacy communities, and 8 Train & empower Europes current and future science diplomacy professionals, are particularly important to build long-term capacity and ensure a sustainable approach to science diplomacy. However, the MCAA regrets the lack of explicit recognition of researcher networks & associations as enablers that translate policy frameworks into real cooperation and trust. Supporting the networks is a necessary step to ensure that Europe remains credible and influential on the global stage.
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Meeting with Christian Ehler (Member of the European Parliament)

20 Oct 2025 · Upcoming event on MSCA

Response to European Research Area (ERA) Act

10 Sept 2025

The Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), a global network of more than 23,000 researchers at all career stages, welcomes the forthcoming ERA Act as a vital step toward securing the free movement of knowledge and researchers, and toward building a more competitive and integrated ERA. This feedback draws on our recent joint statement (attached) with the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers, which sets out six key priorities and concrete measures: 1. Promote and protect scientific freedom The MCAA calls for EU-level safeguards of academic freedom, including the creation of an independent European ombudsperson for academic freedom to support researchers facing undue interference. Protecting scientific freedom is essential to counter disinformation, maintain trust, and uphold democratic values. 2. Ensure competitiveness and promote and protect open science Competitiveness thrives on openness. The ERA Act should require transparency on non-academic sectors contributions to research funding and participation, widen participation across all regions, and enshrine as open as possible, as closed as necessary as a guiding principle to maximise knowledge circulation and societal value. 3. Ensure responsible use of EU funds and enable European freedom Access to EU R&I funds must be contingent on employment contracts (including social security) for all researchers and on effective Gender Equality Plans. This ties funding to fair working conditions and equality compliance, ensuring EU funds strengthen excellence, integrity, and mobility without sacrificing social protections. 4. Increase the attractiveness of research careers and address mobility barriers The ERA Act should recognise doctoral candidates as researchers with competitive salaries and social rights, ensure automatic recognition of academic degrees across the EU, and establish EU-juridical worker status with transversal access to social security for R1R4 researchers and their families, reducing friction to mobility and brain circulation. 5. Increase investments in R&I EU must reach 3% of GDP total R&I investment, with at least 1.25% public spending. The ERA Act should protect civil R&I budgets from reclassification into broader competitiveness funds and consider fiscal flexibilities analogous to defence to catalyse national reforms and sustained R&I investment. 6. Ensuring independence and stability for the ERC and the MSCA programmes The ERC programme and the MSCA programme need durable, autonomous, and sufficiently resourced frameworks, insulated from short-term political pressures. Stable, independent, excellence-driven programmes are vital to retain talent, foster breakthrough science, and secure Europes global leadership. With these provisions, the ERA Act can move beyond aspiration to action: creating a level playing field across Member States, embedding openness as a core value, and safeguarding Europes capacity to lead in science and innovation. The MCAA stands ready to contribute to this shared endeavour. Relevant Statements: Statement by Eurodoc & the MCAA: Wishlist for the ERA Act https://zenodo.org/records/16309750 Securing Europe's R&I Horizon: Call for a Researcher-Centred Framework Programme https://zenodo.org/records/16963333 MCAA on Choose Europe: Attracting Global Talent to Build a Stronger ERA https://zenodo.org/records/15462203 MCAA's vision for the next MFF: Strengthening European Competitiveness by empowering the MSCA https://zenodo.org/records/15461882
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Response to A European Strategy for AI in science – paving the way for a European AI research council

5 Jun 2025

The Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA) submits this contribution in response to the European Commissions Call for Evidence. Drawing from our interdisciplinary, international network, we outline principles and proposals to guide responsible, inclusive, and effective AI integration into European research. 1. AI technologies are emerging as epistemic agents, transforming how science is conceived, conducted, and communicated. AI now co-produces knowledge with humans, reorganising reasoning, authorship, and evaluation. Science is entering a hybrid epistemology where tasks like hypothesis generation, literature synthesis, peer review, and method design are shared. Yet this shift is reactive, driven by productivity over reflection. Without governance, we risk bias, irreproducibility, and weakened integrity. The challenge is not just managing adoption but rethinking scientific practice. AI can foster a more rigorous, creative, and inclusive system, if reporting standards and evaluation frameworks evolve to reflect AIs epistemic role while ensuring transparency, inclusion, and trust. 2. AI enables new forms of discovery yet research assessment (RA) frameworks lag behind. Traditional metrics often overlook human-AI collaboration and novel outputs. Some RA practices may even discourage AI use or promote its concealment. AI-native frameworks are needed to recognise these novel outputs and practices. Narrative evaluation methods should also be adopted to meaningfully assess interdisciplinary and AI-assisted research. Without such reform, RA systems risk stifling innovation rather than supporting it. 3. AI readiness requires more than access, it demands skills, infrastructure, and strategy. Many institutions lack the capacity for effective integration. We recommend AI transition cohorts, embedded AI fellows in non-AI labs, and tailored capacity-building roadmaps. Democratising AI is essential to avoid deepening inequalities and ensure broad benefit. 4. Early and mid-career researchers are key to AI-integrated science. However, they still face insecure jobs and outdated evaluation systems. The strategy should support them with flexible funding, recognition of hybrid expertise, and roles in governance. Meanwhile, senior researchers may face digital divides or AI-training gaps. Support, upskilling, and inclusive training can keep senior researchers engaged as contributors and mentors. 5. Inclusion must be central to Europes AI strategy. Underrepresented groups (including women, minorities, researchers with disabilities) risk exclusion as AI reshapes research. Systems reliant on digital fluency may reinforce disparities. Active measures, equitable access, inclusive design, targeted outreach, and diverse governance are essential. Inclusion is not only ethical, it underpins excellence and public trust. 6. AI tools, especially generative models, are widespread in education. While enabling personalised learning, they raise concerns about critical thinking, academic integrity, and dependency. Educators need AI literacy, ethics training, and up-to-date pedagogy. AI used in education and mental health must be transparent, inclusive, and culturally aware, supporting curiosity and collaboration, not replacing them. 7. A robust AI strategy requires a clear theory of change: What institutional, behavioural, and cultural shifts are needed? Where should interventions focus, e.g. assessment, governance, procurement, careers? A defined theory of change can guide responsible, sustainable AI integration that upholds integrity, equity, and societal relevance. AI integration into European science is both a great opportunity and responsibility. Addressing the challenges above through coordinated action will help Europe lead in building an AI-integrated research ecosystem that champions integrity, innovation, and inclusion. The MCAA is ready to contribute and looks forward to continued dialogue with the Commission and the broader research community.
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