Florin Zubașcu

Citizens everywhere must be directly involved in formulating the moonshot missions in Horizon Europe, says European Commission special adviser. The way schoolchildren have pushed the climate emergency to the top of the political agenda shows the appetite for involvement is there  

Through the Central European Science Partnership, four national funding agencies will issue joint research calls and recognise each other’s evaluation procedures

The European Commission has announced the names of the people to lead the five research missions in Horizon Europe

New law will hand oversight of research institutes to a new agency headed by minister of innovation and technology. Researchers say that limits academic freedom; the government says it will modernise the system

Three EU-funded supercomputers in Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Slovenia will attract more big science projects, lure back expatriate researchers and help reduce the innovation gap between east and west

The European Commission’s 18th annual innovation scoreboard shows the EU has overtaken the US for the first time, while across Europe, the UK and Luxembourg lose their innovation leader status and Estonia joins the ranks of strong innovators

The proposed EU budget for 2020 also boosts spending for Europe’s satnav system Galileo by 75% and gives €255M to defence-related R&D

The government plans to establish a new body - under its control - to manage the research institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, after negotiations over future status come to a halt

Director general Vladimír Šucha says his office is ready to help the new roster of politicians in Brussels understand the “constraints and consequences” of decision making