LERU welcomes the partial political agreement on Horizon Europe

21.03.2019

LERU welcomes the agreement reached early yesterday morning between the European Parliament (EP), the Council and the European Commission (EC) on Horizon Europe, the next Framework Programme (FP) for Research and Innovation (2021-2027). We warmly congratulate MEPs Dan Nica and Christian Ehler, the members of the council research working party, Commissioner Carlos Moedas and the many EC staff members who were able to reach this deal only nine months after the publication of the EC proposal. Their hard work these last couple of weeks and months has been very impressive.

A (partial) deal on Horizon Europe before the EP elections was needed to allow a smooth transition from the current FP to the next, and for the EC to be able to start the ambitious strategic programming that should lead to co-created work programmes. Even though a timely agreement was of the essence, it was crucial that reaching it would not go at the expense of the content. LERU is relieved to see, on the basis of a first analysis, that also content-wise this deal is a decent one.

Many of the EP and Council amendments that LERU identified as worrying in the past months have disappeared or are weakened down. We especially welcome the compromise that was reached on widening participation. Even though 3,3% of the budget will be a considerable increase of spending on widening compared to the EC proposal, more funding for widening was to be preferred over the changing of the nature of the FP by introducing specific widening measures or targets.

Horizon Europe is a large, multi-layer programme, with many different parts that need substantial funding to reach their ambitions. At the moment there is much ado about missions, partnerships, the European Innovation Council and widening measures, but as we have mentioned on many occasions, also the well-established and very successful parts of the FP, such as the European Research Council, the Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions and the ‘regular’ collaborative projects in pillar II should not be lost out of sight when the budget is being divided. On the contrary!

There is only one solution to this funding problem and that is an increase of the total budget of the FP compared to what the EC proposed for the next MFF. LERU strongly repeats the call we published just a year ago, together with 13 other associations of European universities, to double the funding of the FP, or at the very least, follow the proposal made by the European Parliament to allocate 120 billion Euro to Horizon Europe. Investing in research and innovation is good for Europe’s competitiveness and for our European society in general. LERU is committed to repeating this message for the remainder of 2019. Hopefully many will join us!

“Finally”, says Prof Kurt Deketelaere, Secretary-General of LERU, "let's hope that this partial political agreement can be complemented asap with the lacking elements, in the first place the rules on association, making it possible for the UK and Switzerland to get fully associated to the programme. And let's hope that the next EP and EC don't feel the urge to reconsider substantial parts of this partial political agreement."

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