Coimbra Group Statement on the European Commission’s Strategy for AI in Science
08 October 2025
The Coimbra Group (CG) welcomes today’s launch by the European Commission of its Strategy for AI in Science, alongside the Apply AI Strategy.
As highlighted in our June response to the call for evidence “European Strategy for AI in Science – paving the way for a European AI Research Council”, we are pleased to see a strong emphasis on long-term, stable public investment in foundational AI research and infrastructures, while ensuring alignment with core European values such as openness, inclusivity, transparency, and human dignity.
These strategies present Europe with a unique opportunity to set a global standard for human-centric and responsible use of AI in science. By prioritising openness, transparency, and collaboration, the EU can project a vision that combines scientific excellence with societal trust. In doing so, Europe can demonstrate that leadership in AI is measured not only by scale, but by the quality, values, and impact of the knowledge it generates.
Equitable access to infrastructure and data will equally determine the success of these strategies. Infrastructure must not only expand capacity, but also enable knowledge generation, seamless workflow integration, and ethical oversight. At the same time, the environmental cost of increasingly powerful models calls for clear metrics and responsible decision-making, ensuring that scientific progress remains sustainable and aligned with Europe’s twin transition goals of digital and green transformation.
Looking ahead, interdisciplinarity must remain central. AI should be treated as an enabling tool across the entire research landscape, rather than as a standalone technology. With the support of compute and data infrastructures, flexible funding, and collaborative frameworks, the EU can foster a scientific ecosystem that is competitive, responsible, and inclusive. Implemented with transparency and ambition, RAISE can become a cornerstone of this vision.
Prof. Beatrix Busse, Vice-Chair of the Coimbra Group Executive Board, stressed that “interdisciplinary collaboration will be crucial in defining the future role of the researcher in ways that are sustainable and competitive over the coming decades. Social sciences, Arts and Humanities must be recognised as core contributors and workflow innovators, not only as ethical guardrails”.
Coimbra Group strongly welcomes the Commission’s ambition to build robust AI knowledge and skills in Europe across all disciplines and research career stages. As Prof. Beatrix Busse noted, “Skilling and training are the pathway to a human-centred AI and AI literacy”.
AI innovation in research is not limited to technical specialists such as research engineers, data stewards or AI experts with industry-specific expertise. It also critically depends on enabling domain experts to co-develop and adapt AI tools within their workflows, ensuring trust, usability, and real-world impact. The Commission should avoid privileging predefined areas, as this could restrict researchers across natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities from exploring innovative, interdisciplinary applications of AI that enhance European competitiveness, sustainability and sovereignty.
We also welcome the Commission’s plan to strengthen inclusiveness and gender balance in AI, addressing persistent structural inequalities. Additionally, we support efforts to promote, through the Erasmus+ programme, “the ethical design, development and use of AI tools in education” and look forward to contributing to the 2030 Roadmap on the future of digital education and skills. Universities must play a central role in this endeavour.
The Coimbra Group and its members will actively support and contribute to the next phases of this strategy, including the development of RAISE, ensuring that universities play their full part in shaping Europe’s AI future. We will participate in the AI Summit and the formal launch of the ERA action on AI in Science in Copenhagen on 3-4 November.
We will continue to advocate for a framework emphasising hybrid intelligence, supported by FAIR-aligned, secure and inclusive research ecosystems.
