Türkiye hits out at plan to divert Horizon Europe contributions to Scale Up fund

Türkiye has publicly hit out at European Commission plans to divert money from non-EU countries to support a €5 billion Scale Up Europe Fund designed to give promising start-ups growth capital.

“Recent discussions regarding the potential reallocation of Horizon Europe resources [. . .] raise important strategic concerns from the perspective of Türkiye as an associated country,” said a statement from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye.

“Allocating additional resources, potentially drawn from associated countries’ contributions, to a new Scaleup Europe Fund primarily targeting mature, late-stage European scale-ups may further widen the gap between financial contribution and effective access,” it went on. 

Last month, Science|Business revealed that the Commission was controversially mulling whether to reallocate money paid in by non-EU countries, particularly Switzerland, associated to the EU’s €93.5 billion Horizon Europe research and innovation programme. 

Instead of funding Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), Horizon Europe’s researcher mobility and training programme, this largely Swiss money would be used to back biodiversity-related grants and give the Scale Up Fund €1 billion.

But with MSCAs heavily oversubscribed, some university leaders and Commission officials internally have pushed back against the plans. 

The idea of reshuffling money between different parts of Horizon Europe is particularly controversial among associated countries, because they have no control over which programmes benefit and which see budgets cut. Some associated countries do well out of MSCA calls, but if these are squeezed to bolster the Scale Up Fund, they could lose out. 

The €1 billion for the Scale Up Fund would come out of the budget for the European Innovation Council (EIC), the part of Horizon Europe which gives start-ups and academic teams grants and equity funding. 

But Türkiye had suffered “very low success rates” when bidding for EIC funding, the statement said. Before any money is reallocated, it wants to see a “transparent assessment of the impact on associated countries’ participation,” and “safeguards to ensure balanced and fair access.”

Although its companies would be eligible for the Scale Up Fund, Türkiye wants more earlier stage support for start-ups, it said. “For Türkiye and similarly positioned associated countries, the more pressing need lies in strengthening early-stage internationalisation pathways.”

Confusion over aims

This latest row over the allocation of Horizon Europe money is a sign of a deeper tension over whether the programme is a global one, or a tool for bolstering the EU’s economy and technological strength. 

In recent years, the Commission has convinced Canada, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea to associate to Horizon, and India may well join too. Brussels has sold the programme as the world’s leading vehicle for international science collaboration. Non-EU neighbours such as the UK, Switzerland, Norway and Türkiye are also longstanding members. 

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But new additions to the programme, like the Scale Up fund, explicitly want to boost European economic competitiveness. The fund aims to unlock “the power of Europe’s breakthrough technology champions” with investments of at least €100 million, the Commission has said. 

But the UK, for example, won’t be eligible for scale up funding, because it doesn’t have access to equity support from the EIC. 

Asked about the plans to divert money, the Commission has previously said it does not comment on ongoing internal deliberations.