The aspiration to create the ERA as a single market for research, technology, and innovation was conceived in 2000 and enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty as a specific goal of the EU. Recent political ambitions to create a "Research and Innovation Union", or the ERA Act, lead to a common European strategy and policy in the field of science, and the further implementation of the "fifth freedom", demonstrating the ongoing need for further development of this field, where countries unite to coordinate and improve their national policies and research ecosystems, where knowledge, researchers, and technologies can move freely. Strengthening EU-wide coordination through the ERA can help stimulate investment and reform, and play an important role in promoting sustainable competitiveness.

Over the past 25 years, the ERA has made significant achievements in key policy areas, including research infrastructure, open science, international cooperation, gender balance in research, joint programming, research careers, and researcher mobility.

Ukraine began developing its own roadmap in 2015. In 2016, the ERA priorities were recognized at the level of the Law of Ukraine "On Scientific and Scientific-Technical Activities," Article 66, paragraph 4. In 2018, the Board of the Ministry of Education and Science adopted the first version of the roadmap, and in 2020, during the active discussion of the new ERA agenda in the EU, an expanded roadmap was prepared, which included innovations that were being considered in the EU at that time. The order of the Ministry of Education and Science in February 2021 approved a new transitional version of the plan, where in addition to the 8 priorities indicated on the slide, the plan included 19 goals and 95 measures.