With ideas moving forward so quickly today, science increasingly needs strong and rapid international exchanges between laboratories if they are to sustain their momentum and keep up with what is important.
Collaboration is essential.
In Europe, this isn't always easy to do, as the region is much more diverse culturally and organisationally than, for example, the United States. There isn't yet really such a thing as a European. Over the last 25 years, the ESF has shown that it can achieve the necessary consensus to stimulate pan-European collaboration, no mean feat when dealing with over 60 leading national funding agencies, many very different. Inevitably there are compromises that have to be made but it can be done and even greater collaboration is required in the coming years. The more we do this and learn from and about each other, the smaller our national differences will become, the greater the scientific advances we will make and, ultimately, the more European we will all become.