The panel discussion, moderated by Tereza Szybisty (OpenAIRE) brought together four speakers, Gareth O'Neill, Ilaria Nardello, Pilar Rico Castro (EOSC Steering Board, Spain / FECYT) and Ana Teresa Maia Mota (European Commission).
Monitoring as a learning exercise
Both Gareth O'Neill and Pilar Rico Castro emphasised that the value of the Survey lies not only in the data it captures, but in the convergence of understanding it has built among Member State representatives. Common definitions of "policy," "financial strategy," or "investment" have taken years to stabilise. Pilar Rico Castro added a critical practitioner's perspective: heterogeneity in national data collection strategies (federated in some countries, centralised in others) remains a real constraint on comparability, and harmonising methodologies is a task still very much in progress
The future of Open Science monitoring
Ilaria Nardello argued that the experience of the past few years since the beginning of the partnership has shown the broad differences between the monitoring of the EOSC deployment, its performance and impact and the monitoring of the National Contributions, providing arguments why the two efforts may hardly be coordinated through a single monitoring effort. EOSC is an infrastructure for research, encompassing an ecosystem of resource providers and uptakers, while Open Science is an outcome of this policy initiative; while different types of performance and impact indicators are required, a common vision for what the monitoring efforts are intended to provide is necessary. Pilar Rico Castro suggested a forward-looking proposal: as national open science monitoring frameworks mature, e.g. in France, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark and now Spain, a federated model anchored in Member State initiatives (aligned with the Open Science Monitoring Initiative - OSMI) would offer greater long-term sustainability than reliance on the current Tripartite Governance arrangements alone.
EOSC as a connecting backbone
Ana Teresa Maia Mota set out how EOSC, as the Common European Data Space for Research and Innovation, is embedded into the Commission's policy landscape: the Competitiveness Compass, the European Strategy on Research and Technology Infrastructures, the AI Continent Action Plan, the European Strategy for AI in Science, and the Data Union Strategy. The challenge ahead is translating this strategic positioning into concrete instruments under FP10: long-term operational funding beyond short project cycles, stronger links between EOSC, EuroHPC, research infrastructures and sectoral data spaces, and targeted action on skills, data stewardship and AI-ready data management.
The piece of evidence that should travel furthest
Panelists were asked which single piece of evidence from the webinar should most directly shape the FP10 negotiations, the panellists offered complementary answers. Ana Teresa Maia Mota pointed to the persistent fragmentation between national investments, policies and implementation as a signal for where alignment is most needed. Ilaria Nardello underlined the synergies and additionality generated by the Partnership as evidence that EOSC is a necessary element of the next Framework Programme. Pilar Rico Castro made the sharpest point: monitoring should never become the purpose itself, and the problems faced in monitoring (scalability and sustainability above all) are the same problems the policy itself must address. Gareth O'Neill concluded that the scale of national investment and engagement now visible in the data calls for matching policy and financial support from FP10 itself.
If there was a single thread running through the webinar, it was this: monitoring is not a technical activity that runs alongside the policy, it is a mirror of the policy itself. The challenges that emerged in the discussion, like the fragmentation between national and European investments, uneven data collection practices across Member States, or the difficulty of aligning EOSC monitoring with the broader Open Science monitoring landscape, are not problems of measurement alone. They are the same scalability and sustainability questions that FP10 will need to answer for EOSC itself.
The next two years will be decisive. The Horizon Europe 2028–2034 negotiations, the revision of the EOSC Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, the expansion of the EOSC Federation, and the maturing of national Open Science monitoring frameworks across Europe are all happening in parallel. Whether these workstreams reinforce one another, or pull in different directions, will depend on the kind of dialogue this webinar made visible: between Member States and European governance, between the Partnership and the Steering Board, and between those who design policy and those who measure its effects.
