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

Austria is investing €146.5 million in three companies carrying out research and innovation in microelectronics, as it joins the €1.75 billion Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) in the field.

The country’s investment in Infineon Austria, AT&S Austria and NXP Semiconductors Austria was greenlighted by the Commission today and is expected to unlock €530 million of additional private investments in microelectronics research.

Austria is the fifth country to join the IPCEI, which was set-up in 2018 by France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom to boost strategic transnational microelectronics innovation.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) is putting €50 million in risk financing towards the Bavarian venture capital fund, Wachstumsfonds Bayern 2, providing impetus for the German venture capital market.

The Bavarian fund provides scale-up financing to innovative start-ups in robotics, digital technologies, industrial manufacturing processes, artificial intelligence and life sciences.

Venture capital investments in Germany remain below the EU average, and the investment will help inject much-needed funding into the country’s start-ups. The fund’s target size is €165 million, with €115 million already committed by LfA, a specialist promotional bank of Bavaria.

The European Commission today launched a free service advising SMEs how to manage and valorise intellectual property (IP) in collaborative research and innovation projects.

The new service, Horizon IP Scan, will provide assessments of each SME’s intangible assets, teach companies how to protect their existing IP when starting a research project with other entities and assist in developing IP management strategies.

Horizon IP Scan is available to SMEs taking part in projects under one of the EU’s research programmes, Horizon 2020 or Horizon Europe, given they apply right before or up to six months after signing the grant agreement.

The launch comes just a few days after the EU start-up fund, the European Innovation Council, announced its 2021 calls for proposals.

Europe needs a societal debate on the science, regulation and global governance of genome editing, according to the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies, an independent body of experts advising the European Commission.

The debate should lead to joint learning and monitoring of the latest regulatory, scientific and governance developments in the field of genome editing, the advisers said.

Today, genome editing in the EU is restricted, and the pressure to lift the restrictions is mounting as scientists, policymakers and civil society organisations demand the EU to review its legislation on genetically modified organisms. The advisers’ call is the latest development in the scientific community’s discussion on the ethics and regulation of genome editing.

R&D spending in Europe is increasing, largely driven by Germany, but growth remains slower than in China and the US, an early analysis by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows.

The incomplete analysis of 2020 business and government spending on research and development suggests R&D budgets in the OECD have increased by 6.2% in the last year, continuing the trend of strong growth in research funding since 2017. The sharp increase in investment could be a result of enhanced emergency funding for health-related research in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the OECD noted.

Overall, the United States remains the top investor in research, with China in second place, reaching 80% of US spending, up from 26% in 2005.

The EU’s ‎€8 billion public-private partnership for high-performance computing (EuroHPC) should be accessible, transparent and simple, according to a new report revealed by the European Parliament today.

“All the procedures should be clear and simple, designed to encourage participation and to reduce the administrative burden,” said MEP Maria da Graça Carvalho, the Parliament’s rapporteur for the partnership, who drafted the report.

To ensure infrastructures funded by the partnership are open and accessible to all interested users, the Parliament proposes creating a ‘User Forum’, which would involve industry and SMEs, which will utilise the supercomputers, in conversations with the EuroHPC’s governing and advisory bodies.

The partnership between the European Commission and member states, launched in 2018, has already funded the acquisition of eight supercomputers in Europe. This year, once EU policymakers greenlight the plans, EuroHPC’s budget is set to double, with €8 billion allocated for the next seven years. The next step, Carvalho argued, is to ensure that the full potential of its network will be reached.

The European Commission today opened applications for the 2021 edition of the EU Prize for Women Innovators which celebrates inspiring female entrepreneurs.

Women male innovators from around the EU that have founded or co-founded a currently active innovative company are invited to apply up to 30 June 2021.

Three winning innovators will be selected and awarded €100,000 in the main category as well as one ‘Rising Innovator’ under 30,  who will receive a €50,000 prize.

The European Invesment Fund (EIF) today announced it is backing BSocial Impact Fund, a new venture capital fund for Spanish start-ups tackling major societal challenges, which has already raised €38 million.

Aiming to raise a total of €45 million for impact start-ups, the new fund will be the largest impact venture fund for early-stage social SMEs in Spain, focusing on addressing three challenges: enhancing the quality of life for vulnerable people, fighting climate change and improving access to education.

The fund is also backed by Ship2B Ventures, a Barcelona-based venture capital management firm, and Banco Sabadell, one of Spain‘s biggest banking groups.

The Council today adopted its position on the new research programme, Horizon Europe, taking the EU to the final step of launching the €95.5 billion (in current prices) fund for research.

Following today’s decision by the member states, the European Parliament will vote on the final deal in the plenary in April to formally adopt the new programme.

“Today’s adoption of the Council’s position brings us only one step away from the final adoption of the most ambitious EU research and innovation programme so far,” said Manuel Heitor, Portugal’s minister for science, technology and higher education.

After the formal adoption, the Commission is expected to publish the final work programmes setting out how the research money will be spent over the next few years. 

A more recent Horizon Europe work programme for the health cluster, dated March, is now available on the Science|Business Horizon Papers page.

The updated work programme lists the calls for health research that will be launched under the EU research programme, Horizon Europe, in the next two years. The updated document now includes almost €7 billion for the Horizon Europe missions, including the cancer mission striving to save 3 million lives by 2030, and €120 million to be allocated to projects without a call for proposals in case of public health emergencies.

The latest draft is still subject to change until the Commission publishes the final version of the document alongside the rest of the Horizon Europe work programmes in April.