Canadians visit Europe to drum up joint Horizon Europe projects

Canada’s biggest research universities have visited Europe to try to forge joint Horizon Europe projects as the country finds itself a target of the new US president. 

The research tie-up between Europe and Canada comes at a geopolitically fraught time, with the US pulling away from both of its traditional allies. Since taking office in January, president Donald Trump has threatened tariffs against the US’s northern neighbour, and even suggested he wants to annex the country. 

Last month, Canada’s U15 research universities met their German counterpart group of the same name in Hannover to hash out new partnerships, just two days after Trump’s inauguration. 

Although the get-together was long in the planning, “there are a lot of things that are going on globally now that make this astonishingly appropriate timing,” said Peter Stoicheff, president of the University of Saskatchewan and the U15’s chair. 

So far, statistics show there’s been a 50% bump in Canadian applications to Horizon Europe since researchers were given access on the same footing as Europeans, although this hardly amounts to a dramatic take-off in collaboration.

“It's not so much that the Horizon Europe associate membership means that somehow, suddenly, there will be a flurry of applications,” said Stoicheff. “If, after three or four or five years, the numbers aren't there, something is going wrong, but I doubt we'll be seeing that.”. 

Part of a wider EU push to get countries outside Europe to join Horizon Europe, Canada agreed to association in November 2023, with prime minister Justin Trudeau describing the programme as “the greatest research and innovation mechanism in the world right now.” 

A transitional agreement allowed Canadians to apply for 2024 calls as though they were already associated, before an official agreement in July 2024 made association formal. 

Under the deal, Canadians can apply to what’s called Pillar 2 of Horizon Europe, which contains the majority of the programme’s budget, and builds academic and commercial teams to tackle industrial and global challenges. Canada, however, does not have equal access to grants from the basic research-focused European Research Council. 

Ease of access

Prior to association, Stoicheff said, the intricacies of lining up domestic funding from both sides made it tricky to fund joint projects with partners in Germany, say, or in Israel. 

“Our research funding system at the federal level is complex, difficult to penetrate,” he said. “There isn't a single doorway for another country and its researchers to access ours, and this would create impediments to true research partnerships.” 

More importantly, the money was blocked. “You kept on bumping up against the fact that somehow each of you was ineligible for each other's funding, you wouldn't be able to get very far,” he said. “But suddenly we're in a new world with Horizon.” 

According to figures provided by the European Commission, there were 147 Canadian applications to Horizon Europe calls in 2024, after association was agreed, compared to 100 in 2023 and 73 in 2022. 

The spike in applications in February 2024 could well be due to Canada’s association, a Commission official said. 

Please apply

For now, these are only application statistics, and it’s too early to tell if association has fed through into real grant wins. 

To pump up these numbers, Canada’s U15 is trying to create more joint projects with Europe through events like the one in Hannover, Stoicheff said, particularly for  challenges such as climate change where the US seems to be drawing back. 

“No country’s universities, in total, can do it alone,” he said. 

Stoicheff planned to return to Canada and encourage academics to apply. “We'd like to go back to our university and say, here are the opportunities in Germany for building research partnerships that could lead to Horizon funding,” he said. 

FP10 questions

But there could be political change brewing back in Canada, too, that put deeper links with Europe at risk. 

Canadians will head to the polls this year, and some research policy analysts privately worry that a new Conservative administration could be reluctant to fund Canada’s association to Horizon Europe’s successor, FP10, scheduled to start in 2028.

Still, Stoicheff said he’s not seen any signs that FP10 association could become a political football. “We've received no suggestions that that would be the case,” he said. 

“When there were Conservative governments prior to the current Liberal government, research funding was supported very well,” he said, although he acknowledged that the “financial reality” could “potentially put pressure on research funding for universities.” 

The Canadian Conservatives, once cruising to victory, are no longer a sure bet to form the next government. Trump’s aggression towards Canada has upended the federal election race, costing the outspoken conservative leader Pierre Poilievre support, and refocusing the campaign on who would best stand up to the US. 

US poaching

Even though Canada wants stronger links with Europe, Stoicheff stressed that even a trade war shouldn’t upset the country’s research relationship with the US 

“I can't imagine that a tariff war, which would be the most negative outcome of the kinds of things he [Trump] is talking about, would affect our relationships with other universities and research partners.” 

If Trump made the US less attractive to overseas talent, Canadian universities could pick up the slack, he said. The University of Saskatchewan poached “terrific” Iranian graduate students during Trump’s first term, he said. 

“If anything, we benefit from these unusual political circumstances, but I think the strong research relationships that are really baked in between Canadian and American institutions are not going to wither on the vine,” he said.