‘This is not the time for change or delay’

While the budget agreed for the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) was a reduction on the previous seven years, it included flexibility to move unused funds between years and categories of spending, and had a clause pledging a review of spending in 2016. 

Crucially for R&D, it was agreed that up to €2.543 billion would be “front-loaded” to tackle youth unemployment and strengthen research. This included an additional €200 million for Horizon 2020, €150 million for Erasmus, and €50 million for the Programme for Competiveness of Enterprises and SMEs (COSME) in 2014-2015. These figures would then be offset against payments in later years.

So there was a bombshell when the Council presented its proposal for the 2014 budget on 11 September. As well as cutting payments to structural funds by €202 million, national governments slashed the budget for “competitiveness” – for which read programmes intended to promote growth and employment - by €426 million. 

“This seems entirely at odds with the repeated calls from the European Council to rapidly implement the Structural Funds as well as the programmes for the competitiveness of enterprises and SMEs (COSME) and for research and innovation in Horizon 2020,”said the EU Commissioner for Budget and Financial Programming, Janusz Lewandowki. 

Provocative and unacceptable 

The Council’s move throws the timetable for new programmes, including Horizon 2020, into uncertainty again. The Parliament’s three largest political groups, EPP, S&D and ALDE said this “blunt breach of the agreement, only days after it was reached” is both “provocative and unacceptable.” 

As a riposte, the Parliament’s budget committee has postponed its vote on the MFF. The League of European Research Universities didn’t pull any punches in its response, saying the €426 million proposed cut to the competitiveness  budget in 2014 would “effectively destroy” investment in knowledge, research and innovation. 

It is inconceivable that the EU would reduce even further its commitment to policies that promote growth and employment, LERU said.

It is completely unacceptable that the agreement on the MFF should be opened up again after the enormous effort, time and energy that was spent to close the deal on the MFF and on Horizon 2020 in the early summer, said the interest group.

All of which casts something of a shadow over preparations for Horizon 2020, as national governments prepare briefings for academics and industry on the structure of the programme and the opportunities it presents to access new streams of European funding to support innovation over the next seven years.

At a workshop to outline the aims and ambitions of Horizon 2020 organised by COST, the European Cooperation in Science and Technology and STOA, Science and Technology Options Assessment, in the European Parliament this week, Teresa Riera Madurell, MEP, a Rapporteur for Horizon 2020, said the programme’s first objective is to “Get Europe out of the crisis – to create growth and jobs.” 

But with budget controversies raging again, this objective could be undermined, LERU claimed, calling on European Council to act with “integrity and confidence”.

“Unless a satisfactory agreement is reached, the already compromised timetable to start the new Horizon 2020 programme at the beginning of 2014 would be irreparably damaged. This is not the time for change and delay,” LERU said.