📋 Tender Overview
The Council for Research and Technology Development RFTE accompanies the Federal Governments RTI strategy with its expertise. The Research Committee today considered and unanimously endorsed the Councils 2021 Activity Report. The managing director of the RFTE Ludovit Garzik was available to the MPs for information. Garzik pointed out that the Austrian higher education system has a rather underdeveloped culture of startups and spin-offs compared to other countries. The institutions and researchers must be specifically supported and encouraged when it comes to translating knowledge into concrete applications.The committee had received several proposals from the opposition on questions of digitization data strategy and investments in technological developments. All motions were postponed with the votes of the VP and the Greens.The SP demands a right to high-performance Internet as part of services of general interest and to router freedom for customers of Internet providers so that they can freely choose their end devices. The Social Democrats are also in favor of measures to safeguard digital sovereignty and an open source strategy by the federal government.NEOS consider a data strategy to improve e-government to be overdue and call for a research database for clinical drug trials. From the point of view of the FP it would be important to significantly increase the Austrian ESA budget.The research committee also dealt with monthly reports from the Federal Ministry for Climate Protection Environment Energy Mobility Innovation and Technology BMK on the payments of funds from the COVID-19 Crisis Management Fund for research projects in the field of climate protection. The reports which cover the period from May to September 2022 were accepted by a majority without the votes of the Liberal MPs.
