The Widening News

UK university opens research institute in Wroclaw to give it a foothold in mainland Europe and reopen access to EU research funding

The region’s entrepreneur scene is fast developing, but it still lags far behind western Europe in the number of companies and the amount of capital they attract

Economic development means the country could soon find it is no longer eligible for EU funding designed to address regional disparities in income, wealth and opportunities. This could leave research and innovation €3B worse off

A research infrastructure to advance the use of heavy ions in cancer therapy is ready to move forward. The EU now needs to put momentum behind the project, as part of a commitment to development of the Western Balkans and to bridge the east-west divide in science

The CE7 coalition of seven universities hopes a new partnership with the League European Research Universities will give them more influence in shaping EU policy to better suit their needs

Fund backed by the governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia sees supporting academic start-ups as an important first step in bridging the gap between academia and business in central and eastern Europe

Eleven universities from the EU and the Eastern Partnership countries have signed a new agreement to boost cooperation following the Russian invasion. Four members of the new cluster are in Ukraine

On joining the EU in 2004, the country had a vision of using EU structural funds to build R&D facilities that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best in Europe. Fifteen years later, Czech science is reaping the benefits

The European Commission is to set up a monitoring system to track attempts to level up R&D capacity across the EU. That should point the way to improving the performance of these funding schemes – with the aim of making them redundant