White paper The European Charter for Researchers in Modern Talent Ecosystems: Structural Gaps and Policy Pathways across the ERA (2026)

The white paper produced by 10 EU-funded projects* examines how the European Charter for Researchers is being implemented across diverse talent and innovation ecosystems within the European Research Area (ERA). Through cross-project evidence, it identifies five interconnected structural gaps affecting sustainable research careers:

• funding-dependent career instability;
• weak institutional career-support capacity and competence recognition;
• limited intersectoral mobility and employer integration;
• under-recognition of applied and entrepreneurial outputs, combined with low intellectual-property literacy;
• uneven regional and inclusion conditions

The evidence indicates that these gaps arise primarily from legacy system design and variable implementation capacity rather than rejection of the Charter's principles.

Section 6 translates the evidence presented in Session 2 of the ERA clustering event (Talent Ecosystems: Building sustainable research careers, 29 September 2026) into policy-brief evidence statements, implications and priorities for further testing.

*The ten EU-funded projects and link to their project websites: 

• DeepTechSeeds
• ARCOE
• CROSS
• NextTechTalents
• ECROS
• BREATH
• SECURE2
• SmartResearchers
• INSIGHT
• AttractAdria