President Markku Mattila, Academy of Finland: ”Use research as a basis for policy decisions”

09.02.2010

“We need to create a better coordinated, more coherent response to meet the global challenges. The health of the Baltic Sea is one of these challenges”, said Markku Mattila, President of the Academy of Finland when opening the BONUS Day today in Helsinki.

Professor Mattila pointed out that an understanding of the full importance of a dialogue between science and society has recently emerged in Europe. New approaches to coordinating and integrating national science funding and research programmes have been developed and new processes are planned. “Baltic Sea research is a pioneering effort in this context”, he said.

“The European Union’s Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region was accepted a few months ago. The importance of research and science was strongly underlined as a basis for the strategy. This will require close cooperation between different funding sources at European, national, regional and local level.”

Markku Mattila emphasized in his speech that the Academy of Finland is committed to promoting scientific research in the Baltic Sea region in a long-term perspective. “We have consistently allocated funding for Baltic Sea research in several research programmes. Recently, the Academy of Finland selected two Baltic-related doctoral schools for educating new researchers.”

Read Markku Mattila’s opening remarks as a whole