Viewpoint: FP10 proposal risks weakening Europe’s innovation capacity

Europe faces major societal challenges, from climate change and digitalisation to health and security. At the same time, global competition is intensifying, with the US and China leading the way in breakthrough technologies such as AI and quantum technology. For the EU to remain competitive the next EU Framework Programme for research and innovation (FP10) must strengthen, not sideline, the link between research and innovation.

We are therefore concerned about the European Commission’s proposal to move control of a central part of the Framework Programme, Pillar 2, which promotes collaboration across the entire research and innovation system, to a European Competitiveness Fund focused on more market-oriented projects. This would be a strategic mistake that risks weakening the important link between research and innovation, especially in areas where industry is highly dependent on early collaboration with universities, such as pharmaceutical development, advanced materials and manufacturing industries, where companies cannot shoulder the costs and risks of basic research on their own.

Investments in scaling up businesses and market introduction are certainly needed in Europe, but they should not come at the expense of collaboration in the early stages of the innovation chain, where researchers, companies and other stakeholders develop new solutions and share risk. Then we risk losing a unique arena where Europe’s leading researchers and companies jointly build the knowledge base that enables innovation and opens up new market opportunities.

A competitive industry depends not only on support at the end of the development chain, but also in the early stages, where competing companies work together to develop new methods, data and technologies that entire industries and societies can use as a foundation for innovation. We must therefore urgently increase investments in excellent research and strengthen the transfer of knowledge from universities to society and industry. 

The Commission proposal to reinforce FP10 with a budget of €175 billion is welcome, but not sufficient. To maintain Europe's global competitiveness both now and in the future, FP10 must have a budget that keeps pace with major global competitors, and precompetitive, collaborative research and innovation funding should be one of the programme´s cornerstones. 

Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank and one of the architects behind the EU’s competitiveness plan, has recommended a FP10 budget of €200 billion. Manuel Heitor, the chair of the Commission Expert Group on the Interim Evaluation of Horizon Europe, has stated that for Europe to become a research, technology and innovation leader the budget needs to be at least €220 billion.

The decisions now being made about FP10 will shape Europe’s innovation capacity for decades to come. The EU should speak clearly for research excellence and collaboration across academia, industry and society, and: 

• Adopt a €220 billion FP10 budget for Europe to become a research, technology and innovation leader.
• Earmark these funds for research, so they cannot be reallocated to other policy areas.
• Strengthen collaboration between academia, industry and society in FP10, with particular emphasis on precompetitive collaboration that lays the groundwork for new innovations.

Hans Adolfsson, is president of Stockholm University; Annika Östman Wernerson, is president of Karolinska Institutet; Anders Söderholm, is president of KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

A version of this Viewpoint was first published in Swedish financial newspaper Dagens Industri on October 23.