Horizon Europe is well underway, but the world of European R&D policy goes well beyond the confines of the €95.5 billion R&D programme. EU climate, digital, agriculture and regional policies all have significant research and innovation components. National governments often come up with new R&D policies, decide to fund new research avenues, and set up international cooperation deals. This blog aims to keep you informed on all of that and more.
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Finland is set to access €523 million in EU cohesion money to improve its R&D and innovation systems, the European Commission has announced today.
The funding is part of a broader €2 billion EU investment package for Finland and includes investments in digitalisation and support for small and medium-sized companies. The Finnish government is committed to invest 40% of this round of cohesion policy money from the EU in the green transition.
The R&D and innovation part of the money pot will be spent in line with Finland’s smart specialisation strategy, an investment plan introduced by the EU to help regions boost their innovation capacity by building on local industrial, educational and research assets.
The announcement adds more weight to plans by the Finnish government to raise its R&D expenditure over the next few years. Political parties in Finland have recently reached an agreement that could pave the way to raise public and private R&D spending to 4% of GDP by 2030.
The European Commission has announced a new round of funding under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) programme in Horizon Europe.
The Commission is planning to spend €857 million on MSCA grants this year. Nearly half of the budget (€427,3 million) will go to doctoral programmes that bring together organisations from different sectors to train highly skilled PhD candidates.
Another €257 million will go to postdoctoral fellowships, €77.5 million for MSCA staff exchanges, and €95 million to the MSCA COFUND programme.
More details about the calls and deadlines can be found here.
The European Association of Research and Technology Organisations (EARTO) has published an in-depth look at a variety of technology infrastructures as it eyes a role in shaping the EU’s future strategy in the area.
EARTO believes technology infrastructures will play a vital role in enabling research, development and innovation to deliver the major building blocks for Europe’s green and digital transitions. A future strategy, eyed by the European Commission as part of the European Research Area policy agenda, is therefore necessary to facilitate their role.
The report can be found here.
The government invested €939 million more in research and innovation in 2021 than the previous year, bringing up the country's total public expenditure to €3 billion.
Of this, €382 million was disbursed through the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII), another €761 million was committed through the State Research Agency.
In 2022, the budget is set to rise again, by almost 19% compared with last year, to €3.8 billion. It will the largest ever public research and innovation budget in the country.
The European Association of Research and Technology Organisations (EARTO) has published a set of recommendations for boosting EU innovation capacity, as the European Commission gathers ideas to feed into the new innovation agenda.
The paper highlights the role of technology infrastructures in testing, piloting and scaling up innovations and stresses the need for an EU strategy governing them, among other measures.
The recommendations include ideas for helping companies scale-up, improving policy frameworks to benefit innovation, strengthening innovation ecosystems, bridging innovation gaps between different regions and developing skills.
EARTO expressed overall support for the new agenda, highlighting its role in ensuring EU’s strategic autonomy. “In the current geopolitical context where Europe find itself today, such a new EU Innovation Agenda has to be instrumental in ensuring EU open strategic autonomy in key advanced technologies necessary for the green and digital transitions,” the paper said.
The European University Association (EUA) is starting to map out mid- and long-term support for Ukraine’s university sector as it establishes a dedicated task force.
The task force will be chaired by Ivanka Popović, rector of the University of Belgrade, who participated in reconstruction efforts following the Balkan wars in the 1990s.
The EUA has also agreed on initial support measures for its potential and existing Ukrainian members, including a membership fee waiver and expediting new membership applications. It is also considering establishing a voluntary solidarity fund to finance Ukrainian universities’ participation in the association’s work.
The seal of excellence will help 1956 researchers whose funding-worthy project proposals failed to secure grants from the EU research mobility programme, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), to find alternative financing.
The seal of excellence is the European Commission’s way to offer support to researchers whose projects met the criteria for receiving EU financing but could not be funded due to limited budgets. It’s meant to indicate to national and regional governments that these projects are worth their time.
Twelve European countries offer alternative funding to seal of excellence holders.
Higher education and research institutions need a change in attitude towards their climate impact to move to reduce emissions, according to a new report by the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA).
The report, which looks the environmental impact of different types of research organisations, suggests significant changes must take place before the academic system can reach climate sustainability.
The biggest source of pollution in terms of greenhouse gas emissions is academics’ habit to travel to meetings and conferences by plan. To address the issue, the authors highlight the importance of virtual interactions.
Other sources of emissions include supercomputing, buildings, electricity, and supply-chain emissions, which in certain sectors are responsible for more pollution than air travel.
The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities says the EU can do more to make health data easily available to researchers, as it welcomes the proposal for the European Health Data Space.
Revealed by the European Commission yesterday, the proposed regulation seeks to enable cross-border health data sharing and re-use of anonymised data for research. Today, health data rarely travels due to EU ’stringent data regulations and their differing interpretations in member states.
One way the new health data rules could go a step further, the Guild suggests, is to enable patients to consent to have their data used for research purposes, including through choosing the degree of protection they desire. This could result in non-anonimysed data being made available, making the data even more valuable for science.
“European science, and the development of new treatments, is held back by a plethora of national rules as well as different interpretations of GDPR requirements. We strongly support the development of a European Health Data Space, but urge the EU to go further,” said Jan Palmowski, secretary general of The Guild.
The five two-year projects will span 13 countries, showcasing how Europe can create sustainable, inclusive and aesthetic places around the bloc as it transitions towards a net-zero economy, as envisioned by the European Commission’s New European Bauhaus initiative.
“They will show how the future can look and bring the European Green Deal to our daily lives and living spaces. These projects should become the starting point for a European and worldwide network of New European Bauhaus projects,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who spearheaded the initiative back in 2020.
The projects will transform a historical building in Rotterdam into a hub for arts, research, learning and community; incorporate new Bauhaus principles into territorial transformation plans; prepare a neighborhood in Munich for a green future while tackling local issues; explore ways to transform territories while tackling climate challenges they face; and focus on support for the most vulnerable residents during cities’ green transformation.
Each project will receive €5 million each from the EU’s Horizon Europe research programme.
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