HORIZON BLOG: European R&D policy newsbytes (Archived_03)

The Initiative for Science in Europe (ISE) has warned the EU Council’s plans to cut Horizon Europe’s budget by €2.1 billion “would inflict serious damage” on the European scientific community.

The cuts, put forward as part of the mid-term revision of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2021-2027 negotiations following a European Council meeting on 14 and 15 December, represent 3.8% of the Horizon budget for 2024-2027.

ISE is calling on member states to revise their position, and says if a reduction is inevitable then further justification for the €2.1 billion figure should be provided.

“The decision on which specific actions should be impacted and at what level requires a careful analysis, in which the research stakeholders should be consulted,” it wrote in a statement.

The European Commission has launched a Horizon Europe Office in Kyiv, one of three new initiatives aimed at boosting research and innovation cooperation with Ukraine.

The office will raise awareness of opportunities for Ukrainian participation in Horizon projects, facilitate Ukraine's integration into the European Research Area, and provide support to the country’s National Contact Points for Horizon Europe.

The EU has also launched a European Innovation Council (EIC) action to provide Ukrainian deep tech startups with €20 million to help them grow and integrate within the European innovation ecosystem. At least 200 startups will receive up to €60,000 each.

A new European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Community Hub meanwhile will provide innovators in Ukraine with access to partners, markets, testbeds, training and investment.

The European Climate, Infrastructure, and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) has selected 34 projects for the latest three calls under the Horizon Europe Missions, with a total budget of €295.7 million.

23 projects will be funded under the Restore Our Ocean and Waters by 2030 Mission, and 10 under a call for climate resilience solutions for the Adaptation to Climate Change Mission.

The final proposal was selected as part of a call for an integrated approach under the Climate Adaptation, Ocean & Waters, and Soil Deal for Europe Missions.

The successful projects were selected from 133 applications. Further details are available here.

The European Commission has selected 17 small-scale clean tech projects to receive over €65 million through the EU Innovation Fund, to help them bring their innovations to market.

Half of the funding will go towards projects focusing on energy-intensive industries, including the manufacturing of glass, ceramics and construction materials. The other projects are in the fields of renewable energy and energy storage.

For the first time, the Innovation Fund will support projects in Latvia and Hungary, bringing the total number of countries covered to 24.

A third of the beneficiaries are SMEs, and all will receive Innovation Fund grants of €1.6 to €4.5 million. More details about the projects are available here.

Innovators in healthcare, machine learning, and regenerative farming are among the nominees for the 2024 EIT Awards, announced today.

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) has selected 20 teams and individuals from 15 countries, who will compete in four categories, one of which is open to votes from the public.

The 2024 EIT Awards Ceremony will be held during the EIT Summit on 20 February 2024 in Brussels, and will showcase innovations from within the EIT Community.

The European Commission has launched a series of calls worth €84 million as part of the Digital Europe Programme, with the aim of strengthening cybersecurity across the bloc.

They include calls for novel applications of AI and other enabling technologies to support cross-border Security Operation Centres, for the implementation of EU legislation such as the Cyber Resilience Act, and for the transition to post-quantum cryptography.

The calls, which are open to businesses, public administrations and other entities, will open for applications on 16 January 2024. The deadline to submit applications is 26 March 2024 at 17:00 CET. See full details here.

The science and technology-focused universities body CESAER has launched a report on the future of Horizon Europe’s controversial new “missions”, which seek to achieve concrete outcomes through collaborative research and innovation.

They need to follow an “adjusted trajectory that envisions the missions as lean and clear instruments where a key measure-of-success is their ability to ‘crowd in’ and marshall new funding from new sources,” the position paper argues.

“To strengthen the resilience of the EU, we suggest allocating the current mission budget to the clusters. With this budget, regular Horizon Europe cluster calls are to be launched on mission topics, but unencumbered by the mission governance approach,” said Wendy Sonneveld, member of the CASAER presidency team in a statement.

A consortium has been awarded a €41 million contract to develop a platform that will support interoperability among various European data spaces. 

The platform is to be called Simpl and the consortium will be led by Eviden Belgium, with other companies from Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands also involved. 

The consortium will carry out their work over the next three years.

A record high amount was invested into research and development by private companies globally in 2022, reaching €1,249.7 billion, the new EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard shows. This is €141 billion more than in 2021.

The biggest individual spender is US company Alphabet, parent company of Google, which invested €37 billion in R&D last year. The only EU company in the top 10 biggest spenders is German automobile manufacturer Volkswagen, which put €18.9 billion into R&D investments. 

The R&D nominal investment growth rate by the 367 EU countries listed on the scoreboard doubled compared to 2021, reaching 13.6%, a higher growth rate than the US’ 12.7%. This is still lower than the investment growth rate shown by Chinese companies, at 16.5%, although this is some way short of the 2021 rate, which stood at over 25%. 

The top 50 global companies on the scoreboard made up 39.1% of total investment into R&D, displaying a “very high concentration of R&D investment in a relatively small number of companies”, the report stated, a trend that has “persisted over the past two decades”. 

Read the full report here.

The European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) is calling to double the budget of the next EU research programme to at least €200 billion in a new statement.  

The call echoes the European Parliament’s ambition to five the EU’s research budget the firepower it needs to meet future challenges but comes at a time when EU member states mull over cutting spending on research. 

Alongside a strong budget, ALLEA urges policymakers to ensure the next EU framework programme achieves a truly inclusive and impactful European Research Area (ERA), cultivates research collaboration, nurtures talents, strengthens diversity and inclusion, and streamlines processes.