Beyond Horizon: Science and competitiveness brief

The EU’s Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) joint undertaking has launched a new €84.8 million call for proposals addressing three topics: boosting health innovation through a network; using AI to reduce animal use in drug safety studies; and decoding diseases related to ageing and the immune system. 

Proposals will be evaluated in two stages. The deadline for short proposals is October 8. Full details here.

The European Life Sciences Coalition, representing venture capital investors and research organisations, has come together with biotech companies to call on the EU to strengthen its life sciences industry. 

“Europe has the talent and science to lead globally in life sciences,” they write in an open letter to the EU institutions. “But without a financial and regulatory ecosystem that matches ambitions this leadership may erode.” 

Among their recommendations are to support deeper and more integrated capital markets, to simplify regulation, and to use public instruments including the European Competitiveness Fund to de-risk life sciences innovation and scale-ups. 

Read the letter here.

The supply of semiconductors to end-user industries in Europe is at “high risk of severe disruption over the next five years,” according to the results of a geopolitical risk survey published by the EU-funded Chips Diplomacy Support Initiative. 

For the first iteration of the survey, 55 respondents, mostly from the semiconductor ecosystem, scored different threats to security of supply and European competitiveness. 

The most severe threats to supply, according to the report, are export controls and a military conflict over Taiwan. Respondents pointed to a lack of private capital, the decline of European end-user industries, a shortage of skilled workers and high energy and commodity prices as the main threats to competitiveness. 

Read the report here.

A Finnish study has found that the impact of public innovation support grows gradually and peaks around five to eight years after companies first receive support.  

The results are based on an analysis of 22 years of public innovation grants in Finland, and show that receiving research and development support makes companies more likely to commercialise meaningful, industry-recognised innovations. But it does take time. 

"Significant innovations often require years of development before reaching the market. Our findings show that funding continuity can be fruitful, but evaluation frameworks must allow for sufficiently long time horizons. The long development cycles should be reflected in policy instruments and evaluation practices,” said assistant professor Robert van der Have from the University of Oulu. 

Find the study here. 

The European Research Council has awarded 182 proof of concept grants to enable the researchers it supports to explore the commercial and societal potential of their work.  

This is a routine funding round, worth €27.3 million, that awards each selected grantee a €150,000 top-up grant to move towards commercialising their ERC project results.  

Of the awardees, 54% work on physical sciences and engineering projects, 37% life sciences and 8% social sciences and humanities. 

The next funding round for proof of concept grants is open until September 17. 

More about the grants here. 

The Horizon Europe programme will fund the first €3.4 million European research network on contemporary antisemitism and Jewish life.  

The project will map and analyse the research landscape, foster collaboration and knowledge sharing, develop methodologies and research tools, as well as promote research translation to policy and public engagement. 

The project is part of the EU strategy on combatting antisemitism and fostering Jewish life, adopted in 2021. It is coordinated by the European University Institute, in partnership with the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in the UK. 

Read more about the project here. 

The European Council have signed off €800 million of research funding for steel, and to help regions hit by the transition away from coal. The funding should amount to up to €120 million a year, and run until 2034. 

The support will “continue to strengthen two critical sectors that are central to the EU’s industrial transformation,” said Nicodemos Damianou, Cyprus’s deputy minister of research, in a statement. 

“While contributing to the green transition it will strengthen the competitiveness and sustainability of these industries that are essential for Europe’s resilience, economic strength, and strategic autonomy.” 

A group of European research umbrella bodies have published an open letter warning against the use of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, the EU’s doctoral and postdoctoral training grants, to respond to immediate needs for training. 

Currently, MSCA grant areas are suggested by scientists themselves. But last year, fears emerged that European Commission could direct priorities from above to hit policy goals, for example in artificial intelligence. 

Now, research groups across Europe have reiterated that MSCA calls should be determined by academics, not officials. 

“MSCA should not be used to address short-term labour market needs,” the statement says. “Its unique value lies in supporting excellent researchers and in strengthening Europe’s long-term research capacity on the basis of an open, bottom-up, and research-field agnostic approach that fosters scientific excellence, interdisciplinary collaboration, and unexpected breakthroughs.”

The European Innovation Council (EIC) Board is calling on more support to bring promising technologies to market, to strengthen Europe’s energy security in response to recent geopolitical shocks. 

“The EIC Board considers that the pipeline of promising European deep tech innovations can deliver both short-term relief, medium-term transition and long-term resilience,” it says in a statement published on June 24. 

It points to deep-tech solutions from clean energy generation and storage to grids, advanced materials and other enabling technologies. 

Among its recommendations are clearer bridges between EU instruments, including the EIC, the new Scaleup Europe Fund, the Innovation Fund, and national and regional programmes, so that successful projects have easier access to follow-on funding. 

It also calls for regulatory simplification, accelerated planning and permitting, more dialogue with investors and measures to stimulate demand.

German and UK universities are urging EU leaders to keep Horizon Europe open to trusted partners as negotiations continue over the shape of the programme post-2027. 

“Europe does not succeed by restricting scientific cooperation, but by treating associated countries as equals and keeping thematic exclusions to a minimum,” Russell Group chair Chris Day and German U15 chair Michael Hoch wrote in a joint article published in German newspaper Die Zeit. 

Germany and the UK should also deliver on the Kensington Treaty signed last year by expanding agreements between research funding agencies, establishing joint scholarships and increasing academic mobility, they said. 

The call came on the final day of the International Science & Policy Symposium in Hannover, organised by the German U15 in cooperation with the Russell Group and the Volkswagen Foundation. 

Read more here.