Horizon Europe, the EU’s new €95.5 billion R&D programme, is finally underway. It has been seven years in the planning; three years in negotiation among Commission, Parliament and member states; and weeks tied up in last-minute political conflicts. It is starting more than five months late – a record even by Brussels’ dilatory standards.
But what’s in it? Here’s our quick summary:
One new feature of Horizon Europe, when compared to its predecessor, Horizon 2020, is “missions” to solve big global challenges.
As in past Framework Programmes, the heart of Horizon is a collection of subject-specific “work programmes” that lay out the Commission’s research objectives in health, energy, ICT and other fields.
Partly overlapping with the work programmes will be a series of 49 so-called partnerships. These are legally constituted public-private, or all-public, consortia doing collaborative R&D in specific sectors, to which the Commission can sometimes sub-contract decisions on who gets money for what.
Another (relatively) new feature in Horizon is the European Innovation Council (EIC), a funding agency inside Horizon focused on start-ups, fast-growth companies and their plans to get new or “disruptive” technologies to market.
A further important feature is expanded support for east European researchers and tech entrepreneurs. For years, politicians in those countries have complained that their researchers win fewer EU grants than those in western Europe, and when they do win a grant they get paid less. Western politicians say that’s just because the eastern universities aren’t as strong, and their national pay levels are generally lower. In the end, negotiators agreed that 3.3% of Horizon Europe’s budget should support efforts to make it easier for poorer countries to win grants – for instance, by funding partnerships between eastern and western universities, or allowing eastern researchers to “hop on” to existing Horizon projects led by the west.
