News 7 October 2026
EU science and innovation report 2026: what it says about citizen science and public engagement
The European Commission's Directorate-General for Research and Innovation has published the report "Science, research and innovation performance of the EU 2026: Securing Europe's growth". It is a biennial, 524-page review of the state of EU science, research and innovation. We looked at what it says about citizen science and public engagement.
What the report is about
Its main theme is competitiveness and productivity. A few figures from it:
- The EU ranks second in the world in scientific output, and 57% of its publications come from international collaboration.
- EU spending on research and development stood at 2.24% of GDP in 2024, against a target of 3%. Reaching it by 2030 would take about EUR 560 billion in additional investment.
- Three main messages: EU science is strong, the system is fragmented across countries, regions and institutions, and knowledge turns into innovation too slowly.
What the report says about citizen science
Citizen science is covered in chapter 3.3, "Open, responsible and free science", in the part on doing science "with and for people". The main points:
- What it is. Citizen science engages the broader public in dialogue about science and in scientific activities. It is used across disciplines and at different stages of research: from co-creation, data collection and volunteer mapping to data interpretation and the dissemination of results.
- The benefits. The report states that the benefits are both epistemic and social, and that public engagement helps enhance trust in science.
- Policy. The EU promotes public engagement in research and innovation through the European Research Area and Horizon Europe. The ERA Policy Agenda 2025-2027 lists strengthening public trust through citizen engagement among the lines of work it continues.
- Numbers. The European Citizen Science platform is given as an example: in December 2025 it had more than 400 projects, 360 organisations and 5,000 users.
- National policies. Citizen science is one of the areas in which the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) observatory counts national open science policies. The report notes that such policies grew in all areas between 2022 and 2024.
Public participation appears elsewhere too. The report says a 2023 assessment confirmed that the EU Missions mobilise broad stakeholder communities and foster strong citizen engagement. The chapter on regions stresses that place-based innovation policy must be inclusive and participatory, especially in lagging regions where discontent is growing.
Our observations
- Recognition is there, space is not. Citizen science gets less than one page out of 524. The term appears about a dozen times, mostly on one page and in the reference list.
- Citizen science is seen mainly as a tool for trust. The report says very little about its contribution to research itself, to data or to innovation, although its main theme is how science turns into benefits for society.
- Indicators are missing. Apart from the platform's user numbers, we found no data in the report on how many citizens take part in research and what that yields. Without such indicators it is hard for citizen science to stand next to other science policy priorities.
Lithuania in the report
Lithuania is named among the countries where the number of scientific publications per million inhabitants grew most over the past decade. At the same time, the Central and Western Lithuania region is listed among regions where both innovation levels and growth remain low.