HORIZON BLOG: European R&D policy newsbytes

EU is teaming up with the World Health Organization (WHO) to employ digital tools in world-wide efforts to track and tackle health threats.  

Starting this June, the WHO will build on the EU’s digital COVID-19 certification system to establish the Global Digital Health Certification Network (GDHCN), a range of digital products to aid the fight against on-going and future health threats globally. 

The cooperation is expected to evolve “with a stage approach” to cover more diseases and user cases, such as the International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis.

A new European Commission report has identified and analysed over 800 EU-funded projects that are contributing to the EU mission “Restore our Ocean and Waters”. 

The mission is one of five created under the Horizon Europe programme to tackle various issues, and has the goal of protecting and restoring oceans and seas. 

The new analysis looked at projects funded by 16 different EU programmes, the majority from Horizon Europe and horizon 2020, but with others also coming from Interreg, LIFE2027, EMFAF, Erasmus+2027 and more. 

A special dashboard has been created alongside the report, which offers a visualisation of the different projects.

More than half of the 76 million people working in science and technology in the EU are women, who represent 52.2% of the workforce, new data shows. This figure is unchanged from 2021. 

Lithuania and the French island of Corsica have the highest percentage of women working in science and technology, at 64%. On the other end of the scale is the North-West region of Italy, where 45% of the workforce are women. 

Despite the fact that women outnumber men overall in the field, they only make up 41% of the total number of scientists and engineers. This is an increase of 2% compared to 2012. However, the slow proportional increase is also down to an overall increase in the number of people employed as scientists and engineers, as the total number of women working in those sectors has grown by 2.3 million in the past decade. 

A total of 73 projects from around the world have been selected as winners of the 2022 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) call for staff exchanges, which is aimed at creating links between academic and non-academic organisations to increase innovation and knowledge transfer. 

The winning projects will receive a combined €77.5 million. 

There were nearly 200 applications for the call, with 189 of them deemed eligible and therefore evaluated, meaning the call had a success rate of 38.6%. 

This year’s call will open on 5 October.

The EU is opening new calls for proposals under Horizon Europe for Civil Security and Society worth over €170 million on 29 June. 

There are six topics addressed under the calls, including fighting crime and terrorism, border management and increased cybersecurity. 

A two-day event will be held on 27 and 28 June to provide potential applicants with more information on the calls. 

You can find out more information about the event days here.

Germany and Ireland today signed off an agreement to kick off cooperation on green hydrogen research, including a pilot project exploring what a cross-border hydrogen value chain could look like.  

Both countries have high ambitions for green hydrogen, which is set to become a key part of EU’s energy mix as the economy transitions towards net-zero.  

Ireland hopes to become a green hydrogen exporter, using its surplus wind power to turn water into green hydrogen though electrolysis. Germany, a net importer of the gas, wants to ensure it can cover its needs with imported gas from Ireland and other countries, such as Namibia, with which it has signed a similar cooperation agreement. 

It’s crunch time to seal the UK’s participation in the EU’s Horizon Europe research programme as the global R&D race heats up, the League of European Research Universities (LERU) says in latest statement.

LERU notes increasing R&D investments in China and the US, but says the EU and UK together “can cement Horizon Europe’s status as the world’s biggest and most impactful scientific programme and set the direction in areas of strategic importance, such as AI, engineering biology and quantum technologies.”

The UK was locked out of the EU’s €95.5 billion research programme for months, but the two recently returned to the negotiating table to seal the UK’s participation after resolving wider political disputes in the Windsor agreement.

The EU and US will hold the fourth meeting discussing tech and trade cooperation in Sweden this week.

The topics on the table will include artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, online platforms, sustainable trade, export controls and investment screening as well as trade facilitation.

Cross-Atlantic tech cooperation has been on the rise since the Council was first launched, with the EU and US agreeing to coordinate green tech incentive schemes and edging closer to a joint approach to artificial intelligence.

Horizon Europe is set to fund 130 projects training 1600 doctoral candidates in latest €434.8 million Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) call for doctoral networks.

The money will fund international doctoral programmes, including industrial doctorates, which allows researchers in training to gain experience in industry and the public sector, as well as joint doctorates that lead to multiple degrees.

The call will close on 28 November 2023, with first projects due to start in summer 2024.

The third annual report on UK spinouts has now been published, put together by company data sourcing specialists Beauhurst in partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineering. 

It shows that the 1,166 active spinout companies make up just 2.52% of all high-growth businesses in the country, but according to the report they “punch well above their weight”. For example, the spinouts secured 9.11% of all equity finance raised by private UK companies last year. 

The UK government has also acknowledged the importance of spinouts to the British economy, according to the report.