HORIZON BLOG: European R&D policy newsbytes

Germany’s largest research organisation is putting its weight behind a call by MEPs for a €200 billion budget for FP10, the EU’s next Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. 

In a position paper released last week, Helmholtz says increased investment is crucial to ensure the success of FP10.   

Bigger funds would help the EU solve big challenges such as digital transformation, energy transition, climate change, the depletion of natural resources and the degradation of ecosystems. 

“To meet all these enormous challenges, an increased, very ambitious research budget is key to promoting future innovative and creative solutions – and a sustainable future for Europe,” the paper says. 

In an interview with Science|Business in January, Helmholtz president Otmar Wiestler said FP10 should include EU-wide efforts to take industrial leadership in new technologies. 

While 2024 is the election year for around 64 countries and the European Union, for the European Research Council (ERC) it is the chance to evaluate the outcomes of the projects it funded on democracy.

The ERC published a report that explores the outcomes of its €368 million funded projects in voting behavior, digital campaigns, and disinformation, among others.

The report is not putting forward any policy suggestions,  however, it seeks to present decision-makers with scientific evidence for addressing challenges to democratic systems worldwide.

More details are available here.

The European Commission has launched preparations for its new Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) on climate and health, after collecting large amounts of input from experts at a conference on the health impact of climate change.

At an event held in Brussels last month, the Commission brought together nearly 500 researchers, decision-makers and funders to discuss critical challenges and priorities in climate change and health research.

Experts raised pressing issues, including the slow translation of research into policies, funding disparities for climate and health research in the Global South, and inequalities in data availability across regions. They called for more qualitative research to represent diverse perspectives and facilitate inclusive climate adaptation and mitigation strategies to safeguard public health.

More details here.

Making the EU economy climate-neutral requires a new and improved research and innovation agenda, according to a new report by the European Commission.

The EU is planning to become the first climate neutral continent by 2050, but the lofty goal might not be achievable without increased investments and improved strategies for research and innovation.

"The EU must intensify its efforts and revisit its approach to R&I to ensure it is fit for purpose and well equipped to support the next wave of breakthrough innovations that will be required to achieve climate neutrality in the EU and globally,” the report says.

The full report is available here.  

EU-LIFE, an alliance of 15 European life sciences research institutes has set out its vision for Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions under the next EU R&I framework programme, FP10, due to begin in 2028.  

The alliance sets out two versions of how it sees the MSCA programme, one realistic and the other ambitious. In both, it calls for increased investment into the scheme. The ambitious version also calls for a new scheme to better connect the MSCA to the European Research Council and another to help MSCA grant winners commercialise their research.  

The MSCA grants are the EU’s main funding scheme for post-doctoral researchers. EU-LIFE’s set of more than 50 recommendations for the scheme comes in the context of the European Commission’s consultation on the future of the programme.  

Read the full statement here.  

EU wind power companies have signed a memorandum of understanding with Azerbaijan's Renewable Energy Agency to tap the potential wind power of the Caspian Sea.  

The agreement was signed during a visit by energy commissioner Kadri Simson to Baku last week.  

“We see now a growing interest from EU renewable companies to work with Azerbaijan and in your country,” she said in a speech last week.  

“The signature of the memorandum of understanding with EU wind companies in the margins of this Ministerial is a very important step”.  

Simson also hailed a 46% increase in gas supplies to Europe between 2021 and 2023. 

Brainport Eindhoven has been designated by NATO as an accelerator as part of the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) programme, which helps start-ups to develop dual-use technologies.

It becomes the first Dutch region to be granted the status. Other DIANA accelerator sites are located in cities including Tallinn, Copenhagen, Turin, Seattle and Boston.

The announcement was made during a ceremony celebrating the first anniversary of the Brainport Innovation & Technology for Security ecosystem on Wednesday 28 February.

R&D spending by UK businesses in 2022 grew more slowly than the country’s soaring inflation rate – though its pharmaceutical industry remained the top spender, according to a new report from the Office of National Statistics (ONS). 

While inflation jumped 9.1% during 2022, private sector R&D spending rose 6.4% to £49.9 billion, of which pharma spent £9 billion. 

The report is the latest product of a controversial effort by the statistics office to improve the way it counts private sector research spending. The topic, though normally unnoticed outside the professional statistics world, caught headlines in late 2022 when ONS announced that for some years it had been inadvertently undercounting the value of private sector R&D. It said a better count would put the value at £43 billion for 2020, up by £16.1 billion, or 62%, from its prior estimates. 

That raised the estimate of national R&D spending in a way that could be interpreted as a success for the Conservative government’s push to make the country an “innovation powerhouse”.  

In fact, as the politically independent statisticians explained at the time, the revision reflected in house efforts to fix problems they had started to see in their statistical methods. Counting business R&D spending – especially of small companies – is particularly difficult for statisticians in most countries. 

ONS’s latest report suggests it isn’t yet finished checking its sums. To get the new figures, it said it had greatly expanded the number of businesses it surveys about R&D activities, and gathered more detailed information from many of them. But it added that it may make further methodological changes in the months ahead – and until then, it isn’t yet endorsing its detailed breakdown of the numbers as final (a ‘National Statistic’, in its language). Nor is it yet producing a final estimate of how important R&D is to the UK economy overall, as a percentage of gross domestic product.

Germany’s annual assessment of its research, innovation and technology system has recommended the government remove the country’s “strict separation” between military and civilian R&D.  

The report, written each year by a panel of experts and presented yesterday to chancellor Olaf Scholz, concluded that this division should be “fundamentally reconsidered and abolished where appropriate”. 

Linking civilian and military research leads to spillover effects that enhance both types of innovation, the report argues. “Germany has so far largely foregone these positive effects due to its strict separation of military and civilian research.”  

The recommendation is not a shock, as last year’s report also called for more synergies between civilian and military R&D. But the call comes as EU countries mull their response to a suggestion from the European Commission that dual use research be permitted in the successor to Horizon Europe.  

Industry association DIGITALEUROPE has joined calls by MEPs for the successor to Horizon Europe, Framework Programme 10 (FP10), to have a €200 billion budget, more than double that of the current programme.

In a new report on innovation in the EU, the group suggests the programme should dedicate 25% of its funding to digital targets and initiatives.

FP10 should incentivise industry participation, it argues, “including through technology-readiness-level (TRL) balance and more attractive legal and contractual conditions”.

SMEs would also benefit from harmonised rules of participation across connected programmes such as Digital Europe, and from efforts to minimise the administrative burden for beneficiaries, according to the report.