UK launches fresh push to drum up Horizon Europe interest

The UK has launched a new advertising campaign and a series of roadshows to convince its researchers to join Horizon Europe projects. The goal is to repair links with the continent damaged in the post-Brexit years when the UK was outside the research programme.

Peter Kyle, the country’s science and technology secretary, was in Brussels on January 29 to meet three new European commissioners, including Ekaterina Zaharieva, who is responsible for start-ups, research and innovation. 

“We stand our best chance of tackling the great challenges of our era, from climate change to public health, to growing economies that work for everyone, by bringing the brightest minds from across the UK and the European Union together,” Kyle said in a statement yesterday. 

The European Commission prevented the UK from associating to Horizon Europe during higher-level disputes over post-Brexit relations, until a diplomatic breakthrough in 2023 allowed UK researchers to once again apply on an equal footing in 2024.

When the country was not associated, its researchers could still join consortia, but they could not lead them, and had to bring their own domestic funding. Meanwhile, UK-based researchers were entirely excluded from the European Research Council (ERC).

Statistics show that the UK has plenty of work to do before it once again wins as much money from Horizon Europe as it did during the predecessor programme, Horizon 2020. 

In 2024, despite renewed association, the country only won around €300 million in funding. In contrast, during Horizon 2020, the UK regularly took home €1 billion or more a year. 

The UK’s poor performance in 2024 is not entirely surprising. Researchers only found out they would be reassociating in September 2023, by which time the deadlines for many grants that started in 2024 would have already passed. So, it will take another year to get a meaningful picture of UK participation. 

In this week’s announcement, the UK government stresses it is optimistic. “Recent, initial signs suggest UK association to Horizon is trending in the right direction,” it said.

It pointed to the most recent round of ERC Synergy Grants, in which the UK won 18 projects, second only to Germany, which secured 34. 

“But the government is determined to go even further to help our innovators seize this opportunity,” the government said. 

Aside from a display advertising campaign, Innovate UK is planning to organise delegations to Italy, Germany and Spain for a series of brokering events. 

The British Academy is also offering pump priming grants of up to £10,000 to encourage UK researchers to apply to Horizon Europe calls. 

The UK has also joined four European research infrastructure consortia, the government announced. They are the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, the European Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science, the Low Frequency Array, and the International Centre for Advanced Studies on River-Sea Systems.