HORIZON BLOG: European R&D policy newsbytes (archived)

The European Association of Research and Technology Organisations issued a warning that a proliferation of new EU R&D programmes could add unwanted complexity for grant recipients.

In the Commission’s latest seven-year budget plan, a range of new programmes and agencies were created that can fund R&D – and operate separately from, or in collaboration with, the EU’s flagship €95.5 billion Horizon Europe programme.

In a statement 8 Mach, the trade group for some of Europe’s biggest research organisations said “the multiplication of independent EU RD&I funding programmes having each a different set of rules of participation will bring challenges to both the EU institutions, member states as well as beneficiaries (i.e. Horizon Europe, Defence, Space, Health, Digital & Regional programmes). This will bring a new level of complexity for beneficiaries to manage the participation in each of these funds. We expect this will be a key challenge the European institutions, member states and the beneficiaries will have to face together.”

The Commission has been promising improved “synergies” between the different programmes, but EARTO isn’t the first group to question whether the new programmes – though welcomed by the research community – could add to the accounting complexities of dealing with EU programmes.

The EARTO statement also praised some of the Horizon Europe contractual provisions for simplifying grant paperwork – such as permitting big research organisations to use their own, usual method of accounting for personnel and certain other costs. But they also called for some further changes to simplify the way personnel costs are calculated.

The EU today signed off the seven-year InvestEU programme, which will invest €26.2 billion in innovative projects bidding to attract at least €372 billion in additional public and private investment by 2027. 

InvestEU is a major funder of private research, innovation and digitisation projects, with a €6.6 billion investment foreseen by 2027. There’s a big focus on SMEs; and all funded projects should address investments gaps and help meet EU policy objectives. 

The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities has proposed definitions for seven key terms to be used when discussing gender equality, diversity and inclusion in its member universities.  

The terms include bias, diversity, equity, gender mainstreaming, diversity mainstreaming, inclusion and intersectionality.  

“To facilitate culture change towards gender equality and diversity, we need to have a common understanding of what we mean by key terms such as diversity, inclusion and intersectionality,” said Jan Palmowski, secretary-general of The Guild. 

Rectors of nine universities in the Coimbra Group urged bigger efforts to improve research careers, making them more accessible and attractive to researchers of all genders. 

“We need to make research careers attractive and compatible with a good work-life balance also for women; only in this way will we make it possible for everyone, regardless of gender and background, to fulfil their potential and contribute to the research and innovation we need to meet the societal challenges we all are facing,” said the rectors’ statement. 

The call comes on 8 March, international women’s day.

Switzerland, which has been left out of the EU’s Horizon Europe research programme, is set to launch a funding scheme for its start-ups that do not have access to the European Innovation Council’s Accelerator programme. 

The Accelerator is a €7 billion EU fund which offers promising tech start-ups grants and equity investments. It’s only available to companies in EU member states and Horizon Europe associated countries, a title that the EU has withheld from Switzerland due to broader political disagreements. 

The legislation for the new scheme will kick in on 15 April, after which the Swiss Innovation Agency will be able to open calls for proposals. 

The seven Western governments in an international body coordinating management of the Arctic region announced they are suspending meetings with Russia, because of the Ukraine invasion. The announcement could affect collaborative Arctic research.

Russia currently holds the rotating chair of the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental organisation started in 1996 by the eight countries with Arctic territories to coordinate use of the region. In a joint statement, the other seven countries on 3 March said that due to Russia’s “flagrant violation” of international law in Ukraine, their representatives will no longer travel to Russia and are “temporarily pausing participation in all meetings of the Council and its subsidiary bodies”.

The Council  has no budget of its own, but the member-countries meet periodically to coordinate policies for search and rescue, habitat protection, indigenous peoples and environmental research and monitoring. In 2017 a special scientific protocol was added specifying how the countries are to grant access to each others’ territories and civilian labs for research. The seven western countries are the US, Canada, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

University and research groups around Europe are coming out with statements denouncing Russia’s military invasion in Ukraine and debate whether the aggressor should be isolated scientifically.  

In a statement on Wednesday, the Coimbra Group uniting 41 European universities highlighted the importance of helping students in Ukraine to continue their studies in Europe or their home country, in the case of international students that were studying in Ukraine.  

CESAER universities’ association issued a statement today underlining the role science and technology plays in building bridges across conflicts.  

In the same vein, the EuroScience association of scientists active in more than 70 countries, including Ukraine and Russia, called on policymakers to not intertwine science and military action. 

“Despite the necessary institutional and governmental sanctions required in the face of such blatant and hostile aggression, we remind all of the world’s leaders of the essential role that the scientific endeavour has played in the past, including in times of war, as a vector for international diplomatic relations,” the EuroScience statement said. 

The European Commission today launched the search for the 2022 European Capital of Innovation, inviting cities with at least 50,000 inhabitants in Horizon Europe countries to apply. 

There’s a €1.8 million prize fund that will award six prizes across two categories: capital of innovation and most innovative city.  Last year’s winner of the competition aiming to highlight the role cities play in promoting innovation was the German city of Dortmund.  

The European Association of Innovation Consultants has updated its July report summing up how EU member states plan to spend the €723.8 NextGeneration EU pandemic recovery fund.  

The report explains how the funds are governed and implemented in each country, summarises opened and planned calls, and runs through how the fund will contribute to Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEIs), which allow member states to jointly fund cross-border innovation projects addressing market failures.  

The recovery fund is a package of grants and loans, to be spent by 2023, and it sits on top of the EU‘s regular seven-year budget. It comes with its own layer of bureaucracy, which the group of innovation consultants attempt to decode. 

The report can be found here. 

A new report by the European Commission’s Group of Chief Scientific Advisors (GCSA) details how the EU can strengthen and extend cancer screening programmes to improve early detection.  

The advisers outline how to improve existing screening programmes on breast, colorectal and cervical cancer and call to extend them to lung and prostate cancer, while highlighting the importance of making screening more accessible.  

The report will feed into the Commission’s upcoming proposal to update EU recommendations on cancer screening, as well as the Horizon Europe research mission on cancer which aims to improve the lives of more than 3 million people affected by cancer by 2030.