Chair of Parliament’s research committee wants EU funding to be fairer

The next Horizon Europe programme should ensure grant winners are picked based scientific merit, so that researchers across the EU get a “realistic shot” at winning a competitive grant, according to the chair of the European Parliament’s industry and research committee, Borys Budka.

“The next Framework Programme must be designed so that a researcher in Cluj or Brno has the same realistic shot at a competitive grant as one in Munich or Paris, not through quotas, but through genuine simplification, through capacity building support, and through evaluation criteria that reward scientific merit, not grant writing infrastructure,” he said. 

The Polish MEP, who sits with the majority European People’s Party group, was speaking at conference organised by Science|Business in the European Parliament on June 2. 

The issue of geographical disparities in Horizon Europe has once more become a political hot potato . Negotiations in the EU Council have been delayed because research ministers disagree over the alignment between the next Horizon Europe and the European Competitiveness Fund, partnerships, bottom-up collaborative research and innovation, but also the Widening programme, a set of funding schemes aimed at helping poorer countries consolidate their participation in Horizon Europe.

The European Commission wants to limit capacity-building measures to Widening countries that are making efforts to increase their public R&D expenditure, but the governments concerned want to retain full access to all instruments, regardless of how much they spend. 

The EU should avoid creating a “two speed Europe dressed up as a competitiveness strategy,” he went on, noting that when countries in central and eastern Europe joined the EU in 2004, their GDP per capita was half the EU average. However, by 2021 the GDP of these countries stood at 80% of the EU average. 

“That convergence did not happen by accident, it happened because the EU invested and those countries delivered,” said Budka. He argues the same kind of convergence can occur in research and innovation if the EU chooses to invest more in building capacity and simplifies its granting rules. 

Simpler and clearer rules would mean that newcomers could compete for Horizon Europe grants on equal terms to those with access to dedicated administrative support or who can afford to pay consultancy fees. 

Speaking at a reception after the event, Henna Virkkunen, the European commissioner responsible for technological sovereignty, said “no region [will be] left behind” but “the excellence principle” will remain the main criteria for selecting Horizon Europe projects.

“Our collective strength grows from our regions’ success and when we strengthen research and development funding and when we spend it on the best research projects in the EU, we are also ensuring that the Union benefits as a whole,” Virkunnen said. 

Related articles

• FP10 must recognise regions or risk missing EU’s full innovation potential
• Romania gets first R&D Teaming grant as past winners weigh in on impact
• EU governments make final push for FP10 deal this month

However, the goal of driving scientific excellence might be at odds with regional redistribution, said Daniel Gros, the director of the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University. 

“I realise politicians have to say that there would be no region left behind, but if you want to really go for excellence in research, that usually means clustering,” he said. “If you just finance the best, usually they tend to agglomerate in certain localities, so it is very unlikely that every region will benefit.”

Gros suggested that the Commission should come up with different instruments for different purposes. Mixing excellence in research and industry and geographical distribution in one programme could result in poor outcomes. “Would it not be better to just separate those two issues and assign very different instruments and very different pots of money for each of them, instead of promising always that everybody will participate,” Gros said.

But national governments should also do their share and strive to offer better working conditions for researchers. 

Marzena Czarnecka, a professor at the University of Economics in Katowice and Poland’s former minister for industry, said performance gaps in European research and innovation will persist if researchers do not benefit from smoother career paths and higher salaries, regardless of their geographic location. 

Czarnecka decried the reluctance of finance ministers to prioritise research and said the base salaries of early-career researchers should be much higher. For scientific excellence, “you have to pay [researchers] the same money as football players,” she said.