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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On Wednesday, the European Commission appointed a new members in the European Research Council’s (ERC) Scientific Council.
Director of HUN-REN Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics in Budapest, Hungary, András Stipsicz is an expert in low-dimensional topology. He will take office in April 2025.
Stipsicz was awarded ERC Advanced Grants in 2012 and 2024.
“András Stipsicz’s expertise and leadership will strengthen the ERC mission to advance frontier research across our continent,” said research commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva.
Read more about Stipsicz’s appointment here.
The Czech Ministry of Education has published its recommendations for the successor to Horizon Europe, Framework Programme 10 (FP10), including a call for Widening measures to remain in the programme. Successful widening tools such as twinning and teaming should be maintained, while others like the hop-on facility and the European Excellence Initiative should be reworked or discontinued, it says.
The paper suggests the European Institute of Innovation & Technology could operate independently from FP10 as a standalone body, or otherwise better align its activities with the European Innovation Council.
Czechia also wants the partnership model to remain in FP10, and for member states to have greater say in proposing and implementing partnerships, especially when they make substantial financial contributions.
Overall, it proposes moving away from large projects which lead to the creation of “oversized, inflexible consortia”, simplifying the system for calculating eligible personnel costs, and having more dedicated calls in the social sciences and humanities.
Support for dual-use R&D should be “strategic, proportionate, and embedded in well-justified parts of FP10”, and this “without strictly separating research activities for technologies that can have both civil and military applications”.
Washington and Beijing have finally agreed to extend a long-running science and technology agreement following more than a year of temporary roll-overs amid criticisms that the relationship has allowed China to extract too much knowhow from the US.
The countries have amended the deal and extended it for five years, the White House announced last week. However, this new agreement, not yet released, only covers basic research and contains new protections on transparency and data reciprocity.
Republicans have accused the White House of attempting to “tie the hands” of the incoming administration of Donald Trump by signing an extension just before the handover of power in January.
The European Commission has signed a 12-year concession contract for the Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite (IRIS²) with a view to reinforcing Europe’s sovereignty and technological leadership.
The constellation of 290 satellites, implemented by a cross-industry consortia of space, digital and deep tech firms, is set to provide secure connectivity services to EU member states and high-speed broadband for private companies and citizens.
According to Henna Virkkunen, the vice-president for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, “this cutting-edge constellation will protect our critical infrastructures, connect our most remote areas and increase Europe’s strategic autonomy.”
Via the partnership with the SpaceRISE consortium, she added, “we are demonstrating the power of public-private collaboration to drive innovation.”
Read the press release here.
The European Commission organised a roundtable with experts to discuss the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in science, as scientists are pushing to increase its uptake in their disciplines.
The talks, hosted by new research commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva and Henna Virkkunen, the executive vice-president for tech, security and democracy, aimed at identifying how to better use and adopt AI to speed up scientific innovation in Europe.
“This roundtable is an important step in realising our vision of a united and well-resourced ecosystem for AI in science, to drive scientific breakthroughs and boost EU competitiveness,” Zaharieva said.
The discussions also looked into ways to pool and consolidate European resources in the field.
Read more about it here.
The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) has selected seven proposals to establish AI factories, to give start-ups and researchers access to supercomputers designed for the development of AI models and applications.
The first AI factories represent a €1.5 billion investment, with half coming from the EU’s Digital Europe Programme and Horizon Europe, and the rest from national funds, after a call was launched in September.
The factories will involve updating two existing EU supercomputers in Spain and Greece, and deploying brand-new, AI-optimised supercomputers in Finland, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and Sweden.
The AI factories will more than double existing EuroHPC computing capacity, and will be deployed in 2025-2026, according to the Commission.
“Now we are ready to lead with the right infrastructure in our ambition for the EU to become the AI continent,” said Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty.
“We are on track to make the AI factories initiative a reality in the first 100 days of the new European Commission. We expect a second wave of offers on 1 February.”
A host of European start-up and investor associations have called on the European Commission to launch a European Venture Capital Initiative (EVCI), to foster exchanges between VCs and institutional investors such as pension funds.
“The EVCI would create a label and a fund-of-fund structure to enhance institutional investors’ investments in VCs, by mapping the ambitious funds in which they can invest, and carry out a due diligence process for them,” the networks, led by France Digitale, wrote in an open letter to President Ursula von der Leyen and her new commissioners.
Start-ups in Europe face considerable challenges raising funds to scale up, partly because institutional investors prefer to invest Europeans’ savings oversees.
“These important financial actors are over-investing in the US market and under-investing in the European risk market, due to our regulatory and cultural barriers,” the letter states.
A working group in the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations (EARTO) has recommended that FP10 supports emerging health technologies to strengthen the sector’s competitiveness and resilience.
From biomedicine to digital health, “the healthcare innovation chain in Europe lacks continuity and efficient mechanisms for the adoption of new health technologies from the bench to the bedside,” EARTO wrote in a position paper.
Citing “ageing populations, chronic and non-communicable diseases, new climate-related health issues, mental health problems, anti-microbial resistance, future pandemics, and economically unsustainable healthcare costs,” the group said that the successor of Horizon Europe should ensure adequate funding to cross-cutting health innovations and stimulate the participation of SMEs.
Read the full paper here.
Solar radiation modification technologies, which consist in reflecting sunlight away from the Earth to reduce its warming, are not ready to be deployed and cannot substitute emissions cuts, advisers told the European Commission.
According to a study led Chief Scientific Advisors (GCSA) and the European Group on Ethics (EGE), these technologies could “have negative impacts on ecosystems, change rainfall patterns, and hamper food production.” But that’s not all.
“Presenting these technologies as available solutions could damage efforts that are already underway to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change,” they said, calling on the EU to refuse to deploy them during global negotiations.
EU’s new research commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva agreed. “These technologies do show some promise, but they are far from mature,” she stated. “Research must continue, but the opinion of the European Group on Ethics shows research must be rigourous and ethical, and it must take full account of the possible range of direct and indirect effects,” she said.
Read the press release here.
The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) is launching its new European Raw Materials Academy to plug the skills gap on the raw materials value chain within EU member states.
“Critical raw materials are one of the foundations of our renewed industrial policy,” Executive Vice-President for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy Stéphane Séjourné said in a statement.
“We need to reduce our dependencies with our domestic production meeting high quality standards and at the same time secure substantial contracts with like-minded partners all over the globe,” he added.
The initiative, which is the second EU Academy to be set up under the Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA) and implemented by the EIT, is supported with €10 million from the Single Market Programme and Horizon Europe. It is expecting 1,200 participants.
Read the press release here.
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