The European Commission is adding €1.4 billion to the Horizon Europe research programme this year, in latest amendment to 2023 and 2024 spending plans.
The money will be handed out to researchers through the controversial Horizon Europe Missions, and in four new bottom-up calls in Pillar 2 and a new partnership for pandemic preparedness, among others.
This amendment brings the EU’s total Horizon Europe spending in 2024 to €7.3 billion.
But this isn’t more money for Horizon Europe as a whole. The amended work programmes mainly roll out the previously planned investment in EU Missions, which was held back because of negotiations between the Commission and member states on their implementation, following an initial assessment in July 2023 of how the Missions were progressing.
As part of the negotiations, EU member states also secured a separate funding mechanism within Horizon Europe for the New European Bauhaus. Here’s how that transpired in November.
The original 2023/24 work programmes were adopted on 3 December 2022 and first amended in March 2023. They outline Horizon Europe’s calls for proposals, their budget and scope.
Horizon Europe’s total budget for seven years currently amounts to €93.5 billion. It was originally €95.5 billion, but back in January EU member states diverted €2.1 billion to more pressing issues, such as aid to Ukraine. Since then, €100 million has been clawed back from unspent Horizon Europe funds, the so-called decommitments.
This latest amendment is, most likely, the last one to the current set of work programmes before a new set of documents that cover spending from next year is adopted by the new European Commission in early 2025.
