Budget first, impact later: academic community reacts to Horizon Europe analysis

The academic community has pushed back against conclusions drawn from an interim evaluation of Horizon Europe, published on April 30. Where the European Commission sees evidence of sound investment, with every euro spent so far yielding up to €11 in GDP gains by 2045, university groups find the unfunded 70% of excellent research proposals as sign of limited ambition.

“This represents not only a waste of talent and effort, but also a missed opportunity for Europe’s competitiveness,” said Kamila Kozirog, deputy director for research and innovation at the European University Association.

Others in the academic community argue that the Commission’s focus on immediate returns is misguided. 

“While such key performance indicators are understandable in the context of an evaluation, it is crucial to reiterate that research should not be subjugated only to short term policy and economic competitiveness objectives,” said Lidia Borrell-Damián, secretary general of Science Europe. “Blue-sky research, and disciplines which may not provide short-term or immediate responses to policy challenges [. . .] must continue to receive adequate support.”

Laura Keustermans, senior policy officer at the League of European Research Universities, is concerned that the interim evaluation does not mention the bottom-up role of funding instruments such as the European Innovation Council, the European Research Council and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. Her fear is that these could be “limited, reduced or disappear completely” in aid of “even more directionality.”

MEPs and academic lobbies have been urging the Commission to allocated the next research Framework Programme a ringfenced budget of at least €200 billion. For Kozirog, “this is not just a figure but a necessity to match the ambition Europe claims for global leadership in research and innovation.”

For now, however, it appears that the EU executive will subsume FP10 into a new Competitiveness Fund in an attempt to concentrate and streamline efforts to stimulate innovation, productivity and economic growth in the 27-member bloc.

Deeper flaws

Academics following the debate see deeper flaws in the Commission’s approach. Daniel Gros, director of the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University, would welcome a higher EU research budget but also thinks that a lot more could be done with the present resources. 

He would like to see, for example, the EU reduce funding for the large consortia that take part in partnerships under Pillar 2 of Horizon Europe, which he sees as generously supporting collaborative research that is not always necessary. “You should actually favour smaller projects with high breakthrough potential,” he said.

For Riccardo Bernardini, associate professor in digital signal processing at the University of Udine, there is a need to accept that investing in research at low Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) will not have an immediate impact.

“I understand the rationale of having improved European competitiveness as an objective, but I do not agree with the idea that low-TRL research should be subordinate to industrial applications,” he said.

Quantum mechanics, for example, was born in the 1920s from a desire to understand shortcomings in classical physics, with no specific application in sight. A century on, the field is now the foundation of much of modern technology. 

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Meanwhile, insisting that research can deliver competitiveness gains seems at odds with the EU’s broader innovation policy, Bernardini adds. “I get the feeling that Europe wants to continue along its ‘prudent innovation’ policy: taking already developed technologies and use them to develop products and services.”

One aspect of this is a tendency to embed solutions in calls for research proposals. For example, instead of an open call for solutions counteracting pandemic events, a call might ask for solutions applying artificial intelligence or blockchain to counteracting pandemic events. “Why do you need to mandate the use of AI? If AI is a useful tool, someone will use it,” Bernardini said.

Simplification efforts

The Commission also used the interim evaluation to highlight its efforts to simplify research funding, a push that has been well-received by the academic community.

Science Europe, for instance, is supportive of plans to streamline both missions and partnerships, but calls for caution, especially with moves to make applications less rigorous. “Simplification should not justify looser criteria related to ethical conduct of research, open science, sustainability, equality, diversity and inclusion, or gender balance,” Borrell-Damián said.

Kozirog also warned against perceiving Pillar 2, which covers research into global challenges, as an administrative burden and ultimately diminishing its ambition.

Others see complexity increasing in the programme rather than decreasing. “The Commission is very focused on simplifying the Framework Programme but, at the same time, wants to introduce cross-cutting calls for proposals and consider reserving a certain percentage of Pillar 2 grants for technology transfer measures where relevant,” Keustermans said. 

“In general, the Commission should take a holistic approach to simplification, including refraining from constantly adding new priorities, instruments or obligations,” she added.