2024-02-29 13:18:44
What is the state of Germany as a science location? Every year there is an annual report on this – now with homework for the federal government, for example on artificial intelligence and immigration.
According to experts, bureaucracy in Germany remains a major obstacle to recruiting international scientists and researchers.
Many bright minds decided against Germany as a research location – not least because of inefficient and complex administrative processes regarding immigration. This was announced by the Research and Innovation Expert Commission (EFI) when it presented its 2024 annual report to Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) in Berlin.
In the 2014 annual report, the experts certified that the then black-red federal government was only moderately successful in recruiting international researchers. Since then, Germany has been on a positive development path – the country has become more attractive. The chairman of the expert commission, the Jena economist Uwe Cantner, said: “In 2014 we still had a net outflow of researchers, whereas we now have a net immigration of researchers.” Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement – for example when registering for visas.
German language as a big hurdle
The report states that inadequate harmonization of recognition procedures between national social security systems makes it more difficult for foreign scientists to immigrate. In addition, the German language is one of the biggest hurdles that scientists face when moving to Germany.
The second major point of the new report: Germany must do more in the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) in order to catch up with global competition. “Germany and Europe are currently not in the forefront of AI developers worldwide, and dependencies can arise here that you don’t want to have,” said EFI Chairman Cantner. The big players are the USA and China. For example, Germany and Europe would have to build up computing capacity and maintain AI skills.
Germany has to catch up when it comes to AI
The EFI also announced that AI is not yet being used widely in the German economy. The race to catch up must get going quickly. This requires excellent basic research, a powerful AI infrastructure and specialists with AI skills.
“The federal government should continue to strongly support basic AI research,” it said. When accepting the report, Chancellor Scholz said that it was about “not being too afraid of artificial intelligence.” And with regard to the immigration of foreign scientists, he said: “I think it should also be a given that as a scientist in Germany you can converse (in) English.”
The EFI was set up by the federal government in 2006 to regularly develop research and innovation policy recommendations.