In the area of science and innovation, a working group is preparing a proposal for a new Science and Innovation Law, which will clarify the roles of the different actors in the system, as well as their sources of funding. A new Agency for Research and Innovation, AI2, is also in the process of being created, which will replace the Foundation for Science and Technology and the National Innovation Agency. 

The major structural change brought by this new agency stems from the establishment of a multiannual budget for research and innovation, which we intend to increase, ensuring stability and predictability.

The absence of a strategic vision, reflected in the organization of scientific and technological fields and aligned with the main national and European agendas, has made it difficult to identify priorities and transparent criteria for allocating the State Budget to the different research and innovation funding instruments. Thus, the urgency of promoting scientific excellence—driven either by researchers’ curiosity or by national strategic choices—as well as fostering closer links between research and innovation, so that investment in science has greater social and economic impact, requires a new paradigm in the organization and funding of the scientific and technological system.

AI2, the new Agency for Research and Innovation, will integrate and coordinate the entire value chain, safeguarding funding directed towards fundamental research based on excellence, as well as for innovation, fostering stronger links from fundamental research through to industrial application and the commercialization of solutions, in alignment with national and European objectives.

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