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The European Commission is working on a new proposal for its 2021-2027 multiannual budget, which is to be paired with a recovery plan aimed at helping the EU come out of the looming recession set in motion by the coronavirus pandemic.
Here, we gather the latest news and reactions to how the EU is planning to fund its research and innovation programmes during the difficult period ahead.
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A division of European aerospace multinational Airbus has been selected to lead a new land surface temperature monitoring mission as part of Copernicus, the EU’s earth observation programme.
The mission aims to monitor global land surface temperature day and night by measuring evapotranspiration – the level of water vapour emitted by plants as they grow.
The collected data will help European farmers work more sustainably by allowing to calculate in real time how much water different plants require in different areas and how often they need to be irrigated.
As part of the mission expected to cost €380 million, Airbus Defence and Space will design and build one new satellite, with another two satellites potentially constructed and launched at a later date.
EU-LIFE, an alliance of life sciences research institutes, welcomes the new Horizon Europe budget deal and urges policymakers to allocate appropriate funds within the programme to fundamental research.
On Tuesday, the European Parliament and the Council agreed on a €4 billion top-up for the EU’s research programme. Now, within Horizon Europe, the group wants policymakers to allocate more funds to basic research through the European Research Council (ERC) and the mobility programme, Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA).
“In particular, the pandemic showed us how important it is to rely on a solid basis of frontier research to tackle the huge challenges we are collectively facing,” says the group’s statement. ”Obviously, the current agreement does not mirror this fact.”
Kurt Deketelaere, the secretary-general of the League of European Research Universities (LERU), says the final EU budget deal shows that policymaker’s support for research is ‘pure rhetoric’.
On Tuesday, the European Parliament and the Council agreed to increase the funding for the EU’s next research programme, Horizon Europe, by €4 billion. “The outcome is peanuts,” said Deketelaere.
The final budget of the research programme will be €84,9 billion (2018 prices) compared with €74,2 billion that was invested in the current programme, Horizon 2020. The budget is more or less the same, says Deketelaere, but “this is now nicely and deliberately camouflaged by this top up of uncertain sources like competition fines (€4 billion) and the ring-fenced contribution of Next Generation EU (€5 billion).”
After a decade of research budget cuts, the Spanish government today increased the budget of the country’s flagship annual research call to €412 million.
The extra €50 million in funding compared with 2019 will help transform Spain’s research system and attract talent as part of the country’s €1 billion research and innovation 'shock' plan announced in July.
The call will fund basic and applied research projects carried out by researchers at various stages of their careers. Young scientists who are not affiliated or have temporary contracts with research organisations will be allocated special funds to act as principal investigators on applied research projects. The Spanish government hopes the initiative geared at early career scientists will help attract and retain talent in the country’s research ecosystem.
The European Commission today published an R&D agenda for circular plastics as part of the first set of actions of the Circular Plastics Alliance (CPA), which aims to boost the reuse of recycled plastics in the EU.
The research agenda is meant to help the commission-backed alliance of 245 public and private organisations to boost the EU market for recycled plastics to 10 million tonnes by 2025.
The first version of the agenda covers seven strategic research needs from quicker scale-up and deployment of chemical recycling to enable more plastic materials to be reclaimed to developing better technology for separating different layers of plastic products before recycling. It also outlines some specific actions directed at reuse of plastics in agriculture, the automotive industry and construction.
The agenda was published together with a future work plan and a report on the state of play on plastic waste collection and sorting in the EU. Next year, as part of the research agenda, the alliance hopes to map the funding needs and analyse the untapped potential in rubbish collection, sorting and recycling.
There was no breakthrough Monday night as a long day of haggling over the EU budget ended in Brussels.
But negotiators from the European Parliament said they were optimistic that sealing a deal for more money for Horizon Europe, the EU’s 2021-2027 research programme, would be the outcome of talks tomorrow with the European Council, the body representing the 27 EU countries.
“We are very close to a good agreement,” said José Fernandes, a Portuguese member of the European Parliament’s budgets committee.
Parliamentarians are trying to walk back cuts made to research in July, when research ministers settled on €80.9 billion (at 2018 prices) for Horizon Europe, significantly less than €94.4 billion proposed by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm. The talks are part of the bloc’s multi-year €1.8 trillion budget and COVID-19 recovery package.
On Twitter Monday, “Rescue Horizon Europe” trended, with researchers venting their frustration over the proposed cuts. “I wonder what would happen if all scientists in Europe would put down their work for 24 [hours] during the pandemic (including the ones working on vaccines and testing) to signal that current plans for science funding by the EU Council is an active threat to our future?” tweeted Carlos Ribeiro, a neuroscientist at the Champalimaud Foundation in Portugal.
After more than 10 hours of talks Monday, participants said they were edging closer to a deal. “Looking forward to (hopefully) the finalisation tomorrow,” tweeted Green MEP Rasmus Andresen.
Andrzej Jajszczyk and Nektarios Tavernarakis will be the new vice presidents of the EU’s fundamental research funding body, the European Research Council (ERC).
The two members of the ERC Scientific Council will start their terms on 1 January joining the current vice president, Eveline Crone. Jajszczyk, who is the president of the Krakow branch of the Polish Academy of Sciences and a professor at the AGH University of Science and Technology, will oversee the ERC’s activities in physical and engineering sciences. Tavernarakis, a chairman of the board of directors at the Green Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) and a molecular systems biology professor at the University of Crete, will be in charge of the life sciences domain.
The ERC is currently also searching for candidates to replace the interim president Jean-Pierre Bourguignon and is accepting nominations until 20 November 2020.
The European Parliament’s centre-right group, the European People’s Party (EPP), is expecting to reach an agreement on the next seven-year EU budget and the recovery plan later today.
In a statement issued this morning, the group reiterated they want more funding for flagship EU programmes, including Horizon Europe, and expect to reach ‘a political deal’ during today’s negotiations with the Council and the European Commission.
The European Council agreed on a slimmed-down EU budget in July and cut the funding of the EU’s research programme, Horizon Europe, to €80.9 billion compared with €94.4 billion proposed by the commission in May. Since July, MEPs have been fighting to reverse the cuts. The pressure is mounting as the start of the next EU budget cycle in 2021 is fast approaching and a budget deal is needed to agree on the final details of EU flagship programmes.
The European Commission will invest €128 million into 23 research projects that will address pressing needs of the COVID-19 pandemic and its societal impact.
The projects, which involve 344 research teams from 39 countries, will strengthen and adapt manufacturing processes of medical equipment, such as ventilators, research ways to prevent and treat COVID-19 infection, develop medical technologies, aim to understand societal impacts of the pandemic, and look for ways to improve treatment through patient cohort studies.
These are the results of the commission’s second emergency call for COVID-19 research launched in May. The winning projects will be funded under the EU research programme, Horizon Europe.
Spain’s Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology today awarded €29 million to 48 research and innovation projects involving 53 companies, including 39 SMEs.
Out of the 48 projects, three will help Spain tackle the COVID-19 pandemic by manufacturing face masks and nasal swabs as well as developing a new line of production and increasing existing production capacity for disinfectant gels.
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