If the UK votes leave, what would this mean for EU science?

If there is a vote to exit the EU on Thursday, it is not just the UK that will feel the consequences. Voting to leave could have profound implications for the rest of the continent, scientists warn.

There have been many attempts to quantify what leaving the EU would mean for UK research, with science minister Jo Johnson, for example, saying the loss of funding from Europe would be like losing a research council.

But apart from some well-hidden contingency plans, there has been little focus on the effect of a UK exit on the EU’s research landscape.   

In the home of EU Research Commissioner Carlos Moedas, there is real concern. “I don’t think it will be good for Portugal in particular,” said Nuno Nunes, associate professor in informatics engineering at Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute. “We are one of the Atlantic countries of the EU with good connections with the UK. With the EU gravitational centre moving even closer to the centre and east, we would have even less influence; Portugal would become even more peripheral.”

“For Europe, losing the UK would mean losing the continent’s best research institutions and becoming even less important in a world that is becoming dangerously crazy,” Nunes said.

Similarly, Krzysztof Klincewicz, a professor of intellectual property management at the University of Warsaw, cannot see that the EU losing one of its largest member states is in any scientist’s interests. Research is not, “a zero-sum game but rather an opportunity to explore synergies and coordinate activities, to increase their scale and impact through joint efforts,” he said. 

“Hence, it would be strange to expect that a given country or a group of countries could genuinely benefit from the decomposing of the European research system.”

One possible positive aspect of Brexit is that it would help Eastern European countries hold on to their brightest talent. “The UK university system promotes a brain drain of skilled researchers from many countries,” Klincewicz said. However, he acknowledged it is likely scientists would simply go somewhere else.

The view from Bulgaria, meanwhile, is that, “Perhaps one or two groups in EU-13 could have some direct benefits from Brexit,” said Galia Angelova, professor and head of the linguistic modelling department at the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies. “But for most of us, contact with leading EU research teams will become more difficult, especially if visas are needed.”

British voice in Brussels

Politicians, researchers and lobbyists warn that the loss of the UK’s commanding voice would be a huge blow to the quality of research rule-making in Europe. 

“British scientists specifically are much better at public engagement than the scientists of most other EU countries,” said Sofie Vanthournout, director of Sense about Science EU, a UK lobby group which recently opened a Brussels office.

“The majority of grassroots initiatives from scientists to voice their concerns to policy and society that I have seen in the last years, started in the UK. The scientists from other countries are always very happy to join these initiatives, so they certainly share the same concerns, they just don't seem to have the same proactiveness as the British scientists,” Vanthournout said.

Anne Glover, until 2014 the EU chief scientific adviser, earlier this year told a UK parliamentary inquiry that, “The UK voice is very welcome, very loud, very credible, and it is acted upon [in the EU]. We chair many of the influential committees and have members on the European Research Council (ERC). We help to deliver policy in science funding and where it is spent.”

There might not have been an ERC in the first place without a British push. David Sainsbury, then UK science minister, and Chris Patten, then UK Commissioner, played active roles in getting it off the ground, notes Robert-Jan Smits, the Commission’s Director-General for Research and Innovation.

“I remember very well the dinner speech Lord Sainsbury gave on the ERC in 2004, which was a turning point in the discussions on whether or not we should set [it] up,” said Smits. “Also the role which [researcher and former ERC member] Tim Hunt played to develop the ERC concept and round up support was essential.”

Smits credits two other British research administrators, John Wood and John Womersley, for driving the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures, an EU action plan which pools resources to get shared research facilities from drawing-board to construction site.

Other individuals have left a mark in Brussels. Last year a team of Nobel Laureates led by the Royal Society’s president Paul Nurse staged a high profile intervention to avert a budget cut to the ERC.

Many say that former British minister for science and innovation, David Willets, was instrumental in getting the legislative text on Horizon 2020 agreed. “Without the UK at the table, Horizon 2020 might have looked very different indeed,” the previous Research Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn has said.

The UK has been able to improve many pieces of legislations from within the EU. “Cancer Research UK and Wellcome Trust were extremely helpful in making sure that the [recent] data protection regulation was workable for cross-border clinical trials,” Vicky Ford, a British member of the European Parliament, points out. 

The Academy of Medical Sciences and others have said that, in relation to EU rules on animal testing, UK regulations were seen as a driving force for increased welfare standards established across the entire EU.

Research budget concerns

The EU would also lose one of its biggest budget top-ups if Britain heads for the door. In 2014, the latest year with data available, the UK made the third highest net contribution to the EU budget, €7.1 billion. France is next with €7.4 billion and Germany is the highest, €17.7 billion.

If the UK leaves, the EU would face the choice between making up the difference, probably by asking for other member states to chip in more, or cutting EU spending, including research. It is also possible that, like 16 other countries, Britain could pay to continue taking part in Horizon 2020 from the outside.

Brexit would leave a question mark hovering over Horizon 2020 grants. Britain currently leads 1,483 Horizon 2020 projects, more than any other country. The next highest is Spain on 902.

Asked if Horizon 2020 contracts involving British recipients would be maintained in the event of Brexit, a Commission spokeswoman said the EU would, “not speculate on hypothetical situations.”

Without a precedent for a country withdrawing from the EU, it is hard to give an answer. 

UK universities, however, are operating on the basis that signed contracts will be honoured.

“I think it’s fair to say that like many issues linked to the ‘what if we Brexit’ scenario, the truth is nobody really knows and there’s a near-absolute lack of concrete detail. The Commission is, understandably, silent on this issue – lest it presents a supposed path forward for the pro-Brexiters to seize upon,” said Dan Walker, head of the EU funding office at King’s College London.

“We’re somewhat working on the assumption that existing projects will continue as they are – surely a mass ejection of UK participants in two years wouldn’t be feasible. One hopes that given the existing top-level commitments made to Horizon 2020, we’d be (or could be) guaranteed to continue on the same basis until 2020 – hopefully that wouldn’t prove to be a naïve assumption on our part,” Walker said.

Brexit will impact planning for the EU’s next research programme, which is already starting, said Benjamin Williams, European manager of the research and innovation service with the University of Leeds. “In my reckoning, by no means definitive of course, a vote to leave will affect the next programme, and the UK is not guaranteed to be even an associate country by 2021, so may not even be eligible to participate – depending on political feeling towards us.”

“Having said that, eventually I would think we will be at least associated, as EU research aims will be harder to achieve without the UK. Nonetheless, it's a worrying possibility that UK researchers may be lost in a 'brain drain' while this is being sorted out,” Williams said.

University College London is banking on its researchers still being allowed to participate. “Should the UK vote to leave the EU, UK entities will still be able to participate (as new applicants) in Horizon 2020 for at least another two years,” said Michael Browne, head of the university’s European research and Innovation. This is the time the EU treaty gives a country to negotiate the terms of its exit.

“In practice, however, we fear that a vote to leave the EU would result in an inevitable decline in UK-based Horizon 2020 research activity, given the uncertainty and perceived risk beyond this two year period,” Browne said.

Even if the EU decides to play it tough with the UK, and refuse to honour research contracts, UK public funding could fill the gap, much like the Swiss government did when its country was temporarily locked out of Horizon 2020 funding in 2014.

Non-solidarity

Not all scientists are concerned about Brexit, with Frank Veroustraete, associate professor of remote sensing at the University of Antwerp, saying the referendum is a mess of the UK’s own making. “[The UK] has always been a very greedy member, trying to get the most out of the EU funds, and then demanding more and more and more. I am sick and tired of this mentality of Anglo-Saxon non-solidarity. If they leave and want to ever come in again, the Union should make it at least as difficult for them to join as they do for Turkey now.”

Others remain nonchalant about the whole thing. Either way, the referendum should not make a lot of difference to science, said Spyros Schismenos, a Greek researcher at the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology in Taiwan, which has won funding from Horizon 2020. The UK will still thrive and find new ways to collaborate. “British institutes will keep their partners. Research and business will continue; let's not act like Armageddon is coming,” Schismenos said.