Viewpoint: Universities cannot deliver Europe’s ambitions on project funding alone

Europe is preparing to spend more on research while paying too little attention to the institutions expected to deliver it. The debate on the tenth EU Framework Programme for research and innovation (FP10) is dominated by the size and architecture of the programme. It should also ask whether Europe’s universities will retain the people, infrastructure and organisational capacity needed to turn a larger budget into better research.

Even a substantially larger FP10 will underperform if it is built on weakening institutional foundations. Research projects depend on capacities created long before a call for proposals is published: stable teams, laboratories, doctoral schools, professional support, international partnerships and the ability to invest before external funding arrives.

Europe cannot build its competitiveness on projects alone.

A 2025 report from the European University Association (EUA) showed just how strongly universities still depend on public funding, and the challenge they face due to the growing gap between institutional costs, such as rising salaries, and core income. 

Poland is a useful central European test case. It combines rising research ambitions and growing participation in European programmes with a narrow institutional funding base. 

A financial analysis published on June 26 by the Conference of Rectors of Polish Universities found that combined public subsidies for 21 comprehensive public universities rose from PLN 6.58 billion (€1.53 billion) to PLN 10.16 billion between 2021 and 2025, a nominal increase of about 54%. Adjusted using the general consumer price index, the real increase was around 13%, although university-specific cost index used in the report produces an even weaker result, because salaries and other university costs rose faster.

The structure in Poland closely resembles the European pattern, but with less room for manoeuvre. Similar tensions affect universities across central and eastern Europe, yet they are expected to converge with stronger systems while operating with fewer accumulated resources and weaker regional innovation ecosystems.

Institutional excellence funding

Poland’s Excellence Initiative Research University (IDUB) programme offers a useful counterpoint to conventional project funding. It combines multiannual institutional funding with competitive selection, strategic commitments and external evaluation. It therefore occupies the space between unrestricted core funding and narrowly defined project grants.

Core funding maintains the institutional base. Project grants finance defined research tasks. Institutional excellence funding changes the conditions under which research is produced by strengthening teams, recruitment, doctoral education, grant support, partnerships and shared infrastructure.

This matters because competitive success is cumulative. Institutions that already possess recognised teams, effective support structures and modern facilities are better placed to win further funding. 

At Nicolaus Copernicus University, IDUB strengthened the research capacity of a comprehensive university outside Poland’s largest metropolitan centres. Such institutions compete internationally while serving regions that lack the dense research, corporate and administrative ecosystems surrounding capital-city universities.

Project funding rewards readiness. Institutional funding helps create it.

Competitiveness cannot be reduced to concentration

Europe needs a larger, autonomous and predictable successor to Horizon Europe, but the size of FP10 is only part of the issue. Institutions enter competition with unequal accumulated capacity. Older metropolitan universities often benefit from established reputations, dense networks, large support offices and greater scope for co-financing.

Many younger research-oriented universities, including members of the Young European Research Universities Network, start with fewer accumulated assets but combine international ambition with strong regional embeddedness. They retain talent, connect regions to European networks and support economic adaptation.

A system that repeatedly reinforces established concentrations may generate excellent projects while narrowing the institutional base from which future excellence can emerge. This is not only a cohesion issue. It is a competitiveness issue.

What is to be done?

Several policy responses are required if this situation is to be addressed.

First, FP10 should provide more realistic coverage of the full costs of participation and reduce the institutional burden associated with preparing and delivering European projects. Universities should not have to weaken their core budgets in order to win and implement EU-funded research.

Second, FP10, cohesion funding and national excellence programmes should operate as complementary layers of Europe’s research and innovation architecture. Their combined effect should be measured not only through project outputs, but also through the teams, infrastructure, support structures and partnerships that remain after funding ends.

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Third, Widening instruments and European University alliances should be assessed not only by participation and mobility figures, but also by the durable institutional capacity they help create. 

Fourth, simplification should be treated as a financial issue, not only an administrative one. High application, reporting and audit costs reduce the real value of European funding and disproportionately disadvantage institutions with smaller support structures. 

Finally, the next long-term EU budget should recognise the distinct but complementary functions of competitive project funding and institutional capacity building. FP10 should remain an autonomous, excellence-driven programme. Cohesion funding, national programmes and other EU instruments should strengthen the wider institutional conditions on which successful participation depends. This preserves FP10’s scientific purpose while embedding it in a coherent European funding architecture.

From project budgets to research capacity

The next EU budget will determine how much Europe invests in research. It should also answer a more difficult question: what institutional capacity will that investment leave behind?

A successful project produces scientific results. A successful funding system also leaves stronger teams, infrastructure, partnerships and institutions able to compete again.

National core funding, institutional excellence programmes and European project funding perform different functions. Treating them as interchangeable produces fragile universities and reinforces accumulated disparities. Combining them can build a broader and more resilient European research system.

Universities cannot deliver Europe’s ambitions on project funding alone. Europe must fund not only research projects, but the institutional capacity from which excellent research comes.

Adam Kola is vice-rector for research at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland, and vice-president of the Young European Research Universities Network.