More than 9000 representatives of the scientific and academic world have joined the petition to ask that the new Commissioner Mariya Gabriel’s portfolio be renamed “Education, Research, Innovation and Youth”
The request is opposed to the decision of the European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen to imply the dimension of education and research in a new portfolio entitled “Innovation and Youth”.
The academics fear that this omission is a symptom of a new propensity of the new Commission towards commercial exploitation at the expense of education and research at the basis of innovation. Furthermore, according to the signatories, the title would link too much the concept of education to “young people”, putting the relevance for each age group in the background.