While it may be unseemly to dance on the political grave of the recently departed, it is permissible to welcome a vacancy for a replacement. As of Monday this week (15 March), Europe's research commissioner Edith Cresson was gone, together with her 19 fellow commissioners, following an independent inquiry. Although the launch of the fifth Framework programme of research has been achieved, major challenges remain.

Two stand out above all: the need to boost scientific education and skills across the continent — which inevitably necessitates increased support for basic research, however technology-orientated it is made to appear; and the need to enhance the technological flexibility of the continent as manifested in emerging companies, growing in the wake not only of Europe's giant success stories (Nokia, Ericsson, Glaxo-Wellcome, Siemens ⃛), but also of inward investors and fundamental academic research.

Leadership comes not only from an understanding of the opportunities and priorities, but also from the imagination displayed in addressing them, and the enthusiasm with which this imagination can be conveyed. Many have good memories of the depth, vision and political reach of Etienne Davignon, who founded the precompetitive programmes such as ESPRIT in the early 1980s in a bid to reassert Europe's technological prowess in the face of revitalized US competition. Is it too much to hope that a similar individual can now be found?