The Commission’s draft work programme update includes preparations for the next Horizon Europe and a biodiversity mega-call
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The current Horizon Europe programme only has a year and a half to distribute what remains of its €90 billion initial budget. The European Commission is now preparing one last big update to its plans for the final year of the programme. Here’s what’s in the latest draft.
What’s the Commission preparing for?
In the final year of the current programme, the Commission will invest €193 million in actions that prepare the research community for innovations in the next Horizon Europe.
Starting in 2028, Horizon Europe will be more oriented towards competitiveness and the market, with Pillar 2, which covers collaborative research, embedded in the new European Competitiveness Fund (ECF). The Commission is planning bridging actions to prepare for this significant change in focus.
The goal is to “ensure a smooth transition” between the two programmes while “strengthening the pathway from research and innovation to deployment and market uptake,” a Commission spokesperson told Science|Business.
“The topics within this horizontal call aim to support cross-sectoral cooperation, strengthen links along the innovation journey from research to deployment, encourage the testing of new approaches and respond to emerging priorities and urgent needs identified through the ECF,” they said.
The current draft work programme update for horizontal actions includes 12 new bridging calls across five topics.
One of the topics will directly tackle the issue of turning research results into innovation. Under this topic, there is €20 million for five projects valorising Horizon Europe results via innovation ecosystems, and another €32.5 million for 13 small-scale projects advancing collaborative research through the innovation journey.
The biggest topic will involve applying AI, a key EU priority. With four calls and a €55 million budget, this topic will fund projects creating an AI infrastructure for multi-lingual European news and visual media, autonomous driving cities, advanced scaling frameworks for high performance AI models, and piloting AI-driven digital platforms for the European energy system. One €10-15 million project will be funded under each topic.
Another big AI call will award lump-sum grants to small and medium enterprises to help them recruit talent. This is another Choose Europe talent scheme call that will complement Horizon Europe’s researcher training programme Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions. There is €30 million in funding for 130 projects with up to €300,000 in funding each.
There is also €30.5 million to support Europe’s research infrastructures and €25 million for climate-related coordination projects.
Biodiversity mega-call
The other big update is a €229.5 million biodiversity mega-call designed to enable the EU to meet its target of dedicating 10% of its overall 2026-27 budget to biodiversity.
The biggest project will be a €50 million Global Ocean Observing System, expected to help enhance strategic autonomy, climate resilience and biodiversity conservation.
The Commission also wants to invest €10 million in a project exploring solar radiation modification, a controversial set of ideas that propose to reflect sunlight back into space to temporarily lower global temperatures.
A €20 million call will fund one project investigating the interface between biodiversity and health, and a €13 million call will finance a project looking for new solutions to wildlife trafficking.
Among calls for smaller projects, Horizon Europe will finance research on the effects of forever chemicals on biodiversity, systemic approaches to accelerate change for biodiversity, analysis of the benefits of clean industry for biodiversity, the drivers for the decline in invertebrates, the creation of living labs for the restoration of ecosystems and cost-effective biodiversity monitoring for policy.
Associated country controversy
The biodiversity and bridging action calls will both be funded through Horizon Europe’s horizontal actions work programme. But this move has already stirred controversy.
In February, Science|Business reported that the Commission was mulling over a plan to use associated country contributions to Horizon Europe to finance these new priority projects.
According to Commission sources, some officials pushed back against the plans at the time, because the money set to be used to fund new priorities would otherwise have been used to top up oversubscribed Horizon Europe calls, such as the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Horizon’s researcher mobility and training programme.
The plans also did not sit well with some associated country officials. These non-EU countries pay into Horizon Europe to receive money back for their researchers. If popular programmes are underfunded, competition increases and scientists have a lower chance of winning support.
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Some also questioned the legality of the move. The Horizon regulation says that the way the Commission allocates associated country contributions should “take into account the level of participation of the legal entities of the associated countries in each part of the programme.”
But the wording is up to interpretation and, according to insiders, the Commission does not promise the country delegates that their contributions would boost any particular programme.
Other updates
In addition to an update to the horizontal actions work programme, seven other Horizon Europe work programmes are due for smaller updates.
On our Horizon papers page, you can find these draft updates:
- General annexes
- Pillar 4 for digital, industry and space research
- Pillar 6 for food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and environment
- New European Bauhaus The Commission is also working on an update for the work programmes for research infrastructures, Horizon Missions and Pillar 5 for climate, mobility and energy research. But these drafts have not yet been made publicly available.
EU government delegates and the Commission are set to discuss these draft work programmes on July 9.
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