“Historic” agreement clears the path for association to EU science programmes, says European Commission president

The European Commission’s president Ursula von der Leyen has said that work can start “immediately” on securing UK association to EU R&D programmes once the agreed Northern Ireland deal is implemented.

Her comments came at a joint press conference with UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, where the leaders hailed a “decisive breakthrough” in talks over trade in Northern Ireland.

UK participation in the R&D programme has been held up owing to a dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol, leaving UK grant winners from the EU’s Horizon Europe programme unable to directly access any funding they win.

Participation in the EU’s nuclear research initiative Euratom and the Earth-observation programme Copernicus has also been put on hold as a result.

But speaking at the press conference on 27 February, the two leaders confirmed an agreement on the protocol had been reached.

‘Free-flowing trade in the UK’

The deal has been described as “a breakthrough” by Sunak and as “historic” by von der Leyen. Agreed in principle by the two leaders, it includes issues such as medicines approval, taxes on goods, and a Stormont “brake” for changes to EU goods rules.

“Together we have changed the original protocol and today are announcing the new Windsor Framework,” Sunak said.

“Today’s agreement delivers free-flowing trade within the whole of the United Kingdom, protects Northern Ireland’s place in our union and safeguard’s sovereignty for the people of Northern Ireland.”

Sunak said on Twitter: “We’re also delivering a landmark settlement on medicines. From now on, drugs approved for use by the UK’s medicines regulator will be automatically available in every pharmacy and hospital in Northern Ireland.”

‘Good news for scientists’

Von der Leyen said: “We knew we had to work hard with clear minds and determination but we also both knew that we could do it because we were both generally committed to find a practical solution for people and for all communities in Northern Ireland.”

Asked what the deal would mean for UK participation in Horizon Europe, she said it was “good news for scientists and researchers in the EU and in the UK”.

“The moment we have finished this agreement—so it’s an agreement in principle—the moment it is implemented I’m happy to start immediately right now the work on an association agreement which is the pre-condition to join Horizon Europe. So [it’s] good news for all those working in research and science.”

Her comments will likely be widely welcomed by the sector, but also mean the sector will have to wait for the deal to be approved by both sides and implemented before there is EU approval of the UK’s association to EU R&D programmes.

Details of the deal are yet to be published and Sunak has promised to give the House of Commons a vote on it.

Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society,  welcomed von der Leyen’s “commitment to progressing association as soon as the Windsor Framework is implemented”.

“With the Northern Ireland protocol impasse resolved, we need to swiftly secure access to the EU’s international research programmes,” Smith said.

He added: “It is more than two years since the government agreed association to Horizon Europe, Euratom and Copernicus—two years of delays that have damaged science across Europe. These schemes support outstanding international collaboration, and the sooner we join them, the better for everyone.”

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Call comes ahead of planned EU pharmaceutical strategy

Representatives of European drug companies have called on the EU to streamline its regulation of the sector, ahead of the European Commission’s much-anticipated proposal for a pharmaceutical strategy in the coming weeks.

“EU-level legislation should aim to simplify and streamline processes” around drug development and approval, authors including a regulatory strategy director at the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations wrote in a blog post published by Efpia on 23 February.

The authors said the revision of EU pharma regulation resulting from the Commission proposal provides “a chance to create a predictable, clear and consistent environment” for the drugs industry.

In recent months, Efpia representatives have repeatedly warned that the EU could push pharma R&D to other parts of the world if they introduce regulations that industry finds too burdensome.

“Complying with multiple layers of governance at EU and national level can add time and costs to the process” of drug development, the authors said in the blog post, which was based on a longer article published earlier this month in the journal Drug Discovery Today.

“There is a clear need for regulatory convergence between jurisdictions to avoid inefficiencies,” they stressed.

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Sector awaiting next steps after von der Leyen and Sunak agree on Northern Ireland protocol

A UK-EU deal on the Northern Ireland protocol reportedly reached today will elicit a “sigh of relief” from researchers, as it paves the way for the UK to associate to the bloc’s R&D schemes, a research policy expert has said.

Prime minister Rishi Sunak held a summit on 27 February with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, at which they reached an agreement on the protocol.

The long-running spat over post-Brexit trade in Northern Ireland has been a major barrier to the UK joining the EU’s €95.5bn (£84.2bn) R&D programme, Horizon Europe, as well as the nuclear research initiative Euratom and the Earth-observation programme Copernicus.

With a deal to resolve the dispute, hopes have been raised across the R&D sector that the EU will now allow the UK to take part in the schemes.

“We welcome the meeting between Ursula von der Leyen and Prime Minister Sunak this afternoon,” said Diana Beech, chief executive of London Higher and a former adviser to three universities ministers. “We hope that this will finally unlock access for the UK to participate in Horizon Europe, giving our world-class universities and researchers the funding that they need to ensure that the UK remains a science superpower.”

She added that it is hoped this new Brexit deal will give research-performing organisations the “certainty and stability needed to continue powering the engine of UK innovation” and that the newly formed Department of Science, Innovation and Technology should now commit to “funding association to Horizon”.

But, speaking ahead of the official announcement today, some experts have also warned that hurdles remain.

“The long-awaited deal on the Northern Ireland protocol will be greeted with a sigh of relief by the research community, who remain strongly supportive of continued association to Horizon Europe,” said James Wilsdon, a professor of research policy at UCL.

“But we aren’t out of the woods yet. Three further hurdles will now need to be jumped.”

Sunak will firstly need to get the deal over the line without hardline Conservative Brexiters and Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party “sabotaging it”, Wilsdon said.

Secondly, there will need to be “fresh haggling” between London and Brussels on the costs of the UK’s association to EU programmes. “I’m sure [this] will be resolved but [it] could slow things down,” Wilsdon explained.

The final hurdle will be the time it will take to “undo all the damage of the past few years, as collaborative networks need to be rebuilt and repaired”, Wilsdon said.

“I would expect it to take two to three years for levels of UK participation to return to where we would want and expect them to be.”

Flexibility urged

Kurt Deketelaere, secretary-general of the League of European Research Universities, also said news of a deal raised hope for UK association to EU programmes, but warned that revisions to the earlier association deal might take some time.

The terms of the UK’s Horizon association were set out in a trade and cooperation agreement between the UK and EU signed in 2020, and would have to be updated.

“Let’s hope that revisions and updates of the earlier association deal can be kept to a minimum, and both sides act with flexibility and goodwill so that we can welcome all UK-based researchers as soon as possible back at full strength in EU-funded research proposals and projects,” Deketelaere said.

Martin Smith, head of policy at health research funder Wellcome, echoed this sentiment, saying he hoped for “swift progress” to finalise a Horizon agreement given the groundwork for UK association was laid in 2020.

“If a deal on the Northern Ireland protocol can be made to stick, it would remove the biggest political barrier to the UK joining Horizon Europe,” he said. “Unlocking easy research collaboration would be a great result for researchers and businesses across the UK and EU.”

Jan Palmowski, secretary-general of the Guild of European Research Intensive Universities, described the dispute around Northern Ireland as “the big stumbling block for the EU’s finalising the accession of the UK” and said that with this resolved “association must happen without delay.”

But he warned that further talks on the revised costs of the UK’s delayed association should be done swiftly to avoid further harm to the sector.

He said: “The UK has now asked to reconsider the agreement around the cost of participation as an associated country, but all sides must understand that too much time has been lost; if new technical issues are raised, these must be resolved urgently.”

UPDATED AFTER PUBLICATION—This story was updated after publication to reflect that a deal has now been announced.

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Draft Council of EU text encourages linked-up fund planning to address auditor concerns

The Council of EU member state governments is set to call for better synchronisation of research and innovation funding across the bloc, in a move designed to address concerns raised by auditors in a report last year.

A draft Council position responding to the European Court of Auditors finding that there is room for improved synergies between the EU’s dedicated R&I programme and its regional funding, which also supports R&I, has now been agreed in principle and was published on 24 February.

In a revision from an earlier draft, the latest position “emphasises the need for better synchronisation of planning and implementation timelines” of the various EU programmes that fund R&I.

In this vein, it encourages EU member states and the European Commission to “include synergies in strategic planning, programming and implementation…to capitalise on the full potential of investments in Europe’s R&I sector”.

‘Insufficient’ coordination

By law, the Commission is required to ensure there are synergies between the R&I and regional programmes. The auditors found that, at present, “insufficient” coordination between the programmes “limits the impact” of their funding.

Like the earlier draft, the text set to be adopted by the Council also stresses the need for more data on funded projects to help inform authorities and researchers about what existing R&I activities could be bolstered by others.

It encourages the Commission and national authorities to collect and share such data, and asks the Commission to work on improving the interoperability of portals providing it.

Other revisions to the draft include a call for “wider use” of the Seal of Excellence, a quality label awarded to good project proposals that cannot be funded due to budget constraints, and an invitation for the Commission to “pay due attention” to “potential undesired impacts of synergies”.

In relation to undesired impacts, it says that the search for synergies should not affect how project proposals to the EU R&I programme are evaluated.

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Bodies say complexity of EU R&D programme hampering quality of proposals and opportunities for outsiders

University groups have decried the complexity of the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, while calling for a raft of improvements to be made.

As part of a consultation launched by the European Commission in December, research organisations have been publishing wish lists of changes to Horizon Europe.

The Commission asked for views on how the programme has performed since its launch in 2021, the transition from its Horizon 2020 predecessor and priorities for its final years in 2025-27.

Publishing its submission on 23 February, the Coimbra Group, representing 41 European universities, said that the increased complexity of Horizon Europe compared with Horizon 2020 “has negatively affected the comprehensiveness” of the programme, due to overlapping call timeframes and deadlines.

Quality compromised?

The group said the calendar of funding calls has been “challenging for applicants” and that short deadlines have “prevented consortia from collating high-quality proposals”.

When Horizon Europe launched, the Commission said that financial administration of grants would be simplified, but the Coimbra Group said it was “very concerned” about how little progress has been made.

Other perceived issues highlighted by the group include a need for better feedback from proposal evaluators; a lack of transparency in the design of funding calls; deadlines that put researchers with caring responsibilities at a disadvantage; and a lack of integration of social sciences and humanities in Horizon Europe calls.

‘Profound simplification’ needed

The Young European Research Universities Network, representing 22 universities, also published its submission on 23 February.

Yerun said that, despite efforts by the Commission to clarify the functioning of Horizon Europe, it remains “extraordinarily complicated”.

“This creates a burden on both individual researchers and institutions, which must invest time, develop expertise and often assign personnel just to understand how to navigate the EU funding landscape,” the group said.

This results in a “striking disparity between insiders…and new or less well-resourced players”, Yerun added, while calling for “a wide-ranging and profound simplification” of future EU R&I programmes.

Too much politics

Yerun also warned against EU R&I funding being too closely tied to political priorities, flagging a “risk that policymaking ultimately frames or even directs the production of scientific analyses and evidence”.

As well as tying R&I funding to the EU’s sustainability and digitisation priorities, Horizon Europe has launched five R&I-linked ‘missions’ intended to increase the impact of researchers’ work on major social challenges.

Yerun said that “earmarking funding for policy-driven research should remain circumscribed” and should not be at the expense of blue-skies research.

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Use of funding mode will be trialled with European Research Council Advanced Grants

The European Research Council has decided to move ahead with piloting broader use of the lump-sum funding mode, Research Professional News can exclusively reveal.

Last week the ERC’s governing Scientific Council agreed to pilot use of the funding mode for Advanced Grants for senior researchers in 2024, the funder has confirmed.

With lump-sum funding, researchers are asked to provide more details in advance of their plans, but are not required to provide extensive receipts of expenditures.

The EU research and innovation programme, which the ERC is part of, has so far mainly used lump-sum funding for smaller projects. The European Commission wants to use the mode more broadly because it reduces the administrative burden of financial audits and leads to fewer mistakes in financial reporting.

But some in the research sector fear the move could lead researchers to be less ambitious with the aims of proposed projects, and worry that collaborative projects may be more conservative with their choice of partners to increase the prospects of meeting their milestones.

At present, the ERC uses the lump-sum funding mode only for its small Proof of Concept grants, worth €150,000 each. Advanced Grants are worth up to €3.5 million over five years.

The move by the Scientific Council follows a tentative decision it took in June to go ahead with the trial.

Back then, the funder said such a move would be “subject to a number of preconditions, including: safeguarding the autonomy of the principal investigator; and not requiring the provision of any milestones or deliverables”.

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Science Europe says research programme now focuses too much on economic impact and global competition

A group of European research funding and performing organisations has criticised what it describes as a shift in policies underpinning the EU’s research and innovation funding programmes.

In its input to a European Commission consultation on the €95.5 billion 2021-27 Horizon Europe programme and its predecessor Horizon 2020, Science Europe decried perceived changes to “the main objective” of the programmes “since the preparation of Horizon 2020”.

“A bigger focus was placed on a utilitarian purpose of scientific outputs for rapid (economic) impact. Additionally, political agendas became stronger drivers of research and innovation strategies,” the group complained.

To counter this, it called for “a stronger focus on the generation of knowledge for its own intrinsic value [through] instruments with a better balance between all forms of science, including both curiosity-driven and challenge-oriented research”.

In this, Science Europe echoed calls from various university groups for a better balance of funding in the programme.

In its consultation response, published on 22 February, the group also criticised what it said was a change in the approach to international collaboration.

“The openness that guided Horizon 2020 was replaced by a more competitive approach,” it said. “Moreover, two European countries, Switzerland and the UK, are no longer associated countries. This is greatly damaging for the European R&I community, existing collaborations and the expected impact of Horizon Europe.”

Budget focus

The input joined a plethora of feedback from research organisations responding to the consultation. Many submissions expressed concern about the budget being insufficient and too subject to political whims.

Science Europe said: “Recent actions to strengthen European technological sovereignty, such as the Chips Act, [have] caused major disturbances in the Horizon Europe budget [and] this has led to a difficult situation.”

In a similar vein, the EU-Life network of life sciences institutes said that for Horizon Europe, “a major caveat is its low budget comparative to what it aims to achieve”. It called on the EU to “stop increasing the scope of the R&I programme without ensuring that additional areas come with additional budgets”, and to safeguard the R&I budget “from annual reallocations to elsewhere”.

Neth-ER, a Dutch research office in Brussels, likewise demanded “a significantly higher, more stable budget to advance the EU’s scientific, political, economic and societal goals”.

In other inputs, the European Association of Innovation Consultants asked for the application process to be simplified and clarified, while the Cesaer group of science and technology universities called for better integration of the social sciences and humanities, alignment with participants’ usual accounting practices and caution over the broader rollout of the lump-sum funding model.

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Pilot instrument for institutions set to launch in 2023-24, but member states express doubts

The European Commission has confirmed that it is planning to provide funding to improve the security of research careers and is “ready to pilot” an initiative in 2023-24.

A Commission official told Research Professional News that their institution is drawing up a roadmap for “establishing standards for attractive careers, tools to implement these standards throughout the European Research Area, and an investment pathway”.

But representatives of EU member states have raised concerns about the impact of the plans on the budget of Horizon Europe, the bloc’s research and innovation funding programme.

Pilot incoming

In January, Research Professional News reported that the Commission was considering giving significant funding to institutions that provide secure career paths for researchers, as part of efforts to fix deep-rooted problems in the sector.

The moves follow pressure from the research community to improve working conditions, particularly for early career researchers, for whom short-term contracts are the norm.

The funding mechanism proposed is a partnership—a tool used in Horizon Europe to combine EU funding with that of private or public partners.

The official said the Commission is “ready to pilot the partnership through Horizon Europe” in 2023-24 and that it would involve “member states and stakeholders who wish to participate”.

In January, Manuel Heitor, a former science minister in Portugal, told Research Professional News that he had been working with the Commission on plans for such a partnership, the aim of which would be to channel funding to research institutions with good practices on supporting research careers.

Heitor said the partnership would be piloted with a provisional budget of €10 million, with the goal of establishing a new programme with much greater funding in the successor to Horizon Europe, which will start in 2028.

Cautious reaction

Member states have expressed caution in their support for the plans.

The Commission confirmed that at a meeting of the European Research Area and Innovation Committee, a policy advice body, on 14 February, representatives of EU member state governments raised concerns over the impact of a new funding instrument on Horizon Europe.

Minutes from the meeting, seen by Research Professional News, say that member states requested further information on the aims and budget of the proposed partnership.

The plans are linked to a wider effort by the Commission to create a European framework for research careers, which includes measures to improve working conditions for researchers.

‘Time to act’

Research commissioner Mariya Gabriel has been urged to act quickly.

The Initiative for Science in Europe, a group of learned societies and research organisations that has helped to organise the pressure to improve research careers, wrote to Gabriel on 10 February to say that there is “an urgent need to act with concrete and reasonable initiatives”.

The Commission official said that Gabriel “welcomes the interest that this file is raising in the wider community” and that the community has seen it “is time to act in a coordinated way”.

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Researchers struggle to take advantage of initiative to boost participation in underdeveloped research countries

A new measure in the Horizon Europe programme to boost the performance of countries struggling to win money is failing to achieve its goals, research organisations have suggested.

‘Hop-on’ allows organisations from ‘widening’ countries that are underperforming in Horizon to join ongoing projects. Data on the new feature in the 2021-27 Horizon Europe R&D programme are limited, with just two rounds so far. But observers say projects receive too many queries and that coordinators often add groups they have worked with before, contrary to the purpose.

“The Hop-on instrument surely needs improvements,” Anna Vosečková, a national contact point at Technology Centre Prague in the Czech Republic, one of the widening countries, wrote in a recent position paper.

Some NCPs, who serve as advisers in EU member states, defended the tool and warned it may be too early to make judgments. Rui Munhá, NCP at Portugal’s government science funder FCT, said: “We are still facing the early stages of the funding scheme, so it is better to wait before we draw conclusions.” He added that coordinators receiving too many queries “is part of the process”.

But Vosečková and others have called for changes to address what they see as difficulties finding opportunities to join projects.

Potential joiners can find projects through a funding portal for abstracts and contact the project coordinator, who will sift potential partners and submit a formal application to add them.

Marta Oliveira, a project coordinator at the Institute of Science and Innovation in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering in Portugal, said some coordinators receive hundreds of emails about joining.

Her institute has found that it can only join projects with organisations it already has relationships with, she said. Extra information about what coordinators need might reduce queries and boost participation.

For now, perceived problems are expected to continue. Vosečková told Research Europe: “Of course the coordinators will pick established partners, as they can start work immediately without any supervision.”

She added that although the deadline for this year is not until the end of September and coordinators will have “lots of time to look for a newcomer”, she was “rather afraid they will not do it and [instead] choose an easy way to pick someone they already know”.

A spokesperson for Slovenia’s science ministry said it it observed issues with the “openness of eligible consortia to open up to widening partners” and that it believed the transparency of the scheme “should be increased”.

NCPs “discuss [Hop-on] quite often, since obviously it does not function as proposed”, said Jānis Ancāns of the Latvian Council of Science. “If this continues, we’re afraid the European Commission will reduce funding for it, which would be a real shame.”

This article also appeared in Research Europe

Update 23/2 – This article was updated with the comment from the Slovenian science ministry. 

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Government shocks sector by cancelling budget for Horizon membership

Switzerland’s exclusion from EU programmes is causing increasing harm to the country’s research, sector leaders there have warned.

The EU has prevented Switzerland ‘associating’ to the €95.5 billion 2021-27 Horizon Europe research and innovation programme owing to disagreements on the relationship between the country and the bloc.

This month, leading Swiss institution the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) said the full effects of this research ostracism “will only be felt in the long term” but warned “the first signs of its erosion are emerging”.

Days later, Swiss academia was rocked when the govern-ment announced it would stop budgeting for the country’s contribution to Horizon Europe. Countries that associate to Horizon normally pay a fee in return for their researchers having access to funding.

Yves Flückiger, rector of the University of Geneva and president of the association Swiss Universities, wrote on Twitter that the announcement “almost sounds the financial death knell for Swiss participation in Horizon Europe”.

The Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research told Research Europe the announcement was “very bad news indeed”.

A spokesperson for the government tried to downplay the announcement’s significance. They said association to Horizon Europe “as soon as possible” remains the goal, that the money will instead be earmarked for other national measures to substitute for Horizon grants, and that money for association could be applied for from parliament when needed.

But the EPFL warned that national-level alternatives are “reaching their limit”, while a spokesperson for Swiss Universities said: “On a political level, it is not a very elegant signal that the [government] no longer believes in an association.”

Unequal impacts

Some organisations say they have been able to make do so far.

A spokesperson for the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute said it is still joining consortia and finding other funding for collaboration, while Mario Jenni, chief executive of the science 
 park Bio-Technopark Schlieren-Zurich, said he has not observed the park becoming less attractive to top researchers and students. 

But EPFL said it had been invited to participate in 20 per cent fewer collaborative EU projects than in preceding years. It also said that two quantum technology projects it had been invited to join were rejected by EU evaluators in 2022, “largely due to the presence of a Swiss partner”.

That statement followed a report from the European Commission last month that the EU’s €1 billion Quantum Technologies Flagship research initiative is being hampered by a “skills gap in quantum technologies”, with qualified researchers “rare or non-existent”.

Researchers in Switzerland think the country could help. “The participation of Switzerland could certainly ease out the situation,” said Anna Fontcuberta i Morral, a physicist at EPFL. Klaus Ensslin, a physicist at ETH Zürich, agreed that “a lot of additional bright minds could contribute to the quantum flagship” if Switzerland were to associate to Horizon Europe.

The problems flagged by EPFL reflect the situation more broadly, according to a spokesperson for the Swiss Academy of Sciences.

“You will certainly find other concrete examples for consequences already now when talking to universities,” they said, adding that—as flagged by the EPFL—existing problems are “minor” compared with “potential long-term negative effects”.

The Swiss government said it remains “ready for negotiations with the EU”.

The Commission did not respond to a request for comment. 

This article also appeared in Research Europe

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Scheme to provide entrepreneurial skills training to researchers and support early-stage startups

The EU’s flagship innovation funder has launched a new scheme to help researchers and early-stage startups commercialise research.

The European Innovation Council announced on 21 February that its Tech to Market programme will provide innovators with training, advice and business creation support to give them the “necessary expertise for the market exploitation of research results”.

It will be open to individuals and organisations the EIC already funds under two of its two main instruments: Pathfinder, which funds the development of breakthrough technologies, and Transition, which supports the development of business cases to bring new technologies to market.

The Tech to Market programme has one strand focused on technology entrepreneurship and another on helping create research-based startups. The EIC is holding an information session on the scheme on 15 March.

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Guild, EUA and Cesaer seek more funding for basic research

Several university groups have called for allocations to be rebalanced within the EU’s research and innovation funding programme, Horizon Europe.

The European Commission has been seeking input for a mid-term review of the €95.5 billion 2021-27 programme and its Horizon 2020 predecessor, to help inform Horizon Europe’s final years and the design of the successor programme.

In a position paper published on 22 February, the Guild of European-Intensive Research Universities called on the EU to increase the share of funding allocated to the first pillar of Horizon Europe, which includes the European Research Council and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions schemes for basic research as well as funding for research infrastructures.

“Moving from Horizon 2020 to Horizon Europe resulted in a decline of this pillar’s relative share in the programme’s budget, from 31 per cent in 2014–2020 to 26 per cent,” the Guild pointed out. It stressed “the need for increased investments in this pillar in absolute and relative terms, as demonstrated by the achievements and undeniable success of its instruments, together with the persisting budgetary constraints that prevent a large amount of cutting-edge research proposals [being] funded”.

Top-heavy TRLs

On the same day, the European University Association and the Cesaer group of science and technology universities published a joint statement also calling for “more balanced” funding within the thematic clusters of the programme’s second pillar, which is focused on societal challenges and industrial competitiveness.

The EUA and Cesaer expressed their “shared concern about the unbalanced share of funding for research projects within the Horizon Europe clusters…in comparison to projects further along in their development and implementation phases”.

They and the Guild called for Horizon Europe to support more collaborative research at low technology-readiness levels—meaning research that is more fundamental and less oriented towards producing new products and services. They said that neglecting low-TRL projects hampers Europe’s ability to tackle challenges such as climate change.

“In the first two years of the programme, we found a substantial decrease in the proportion of calls with TRLs up to level 4 as compared to the corresponding calls under Horizon 2020,” the EUA and Cesaer complained, putting the shares at 14 and 20 per cent respectively.

Health coordination

A day earlier, the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations also published two position statements on Horizon Europe, in particular the health and civil security clusters of its second pillar.

Earto said the structure of the pillar “is not adapted to health technology innovation that is transversal to many industries” and that the cluster on digital, industry and space should also support health alongside the health pillar. It also called for better coordination of health R&I across all EU programmes.

On the civil security pillar, Earto again called for a rebalancing of TRLs, more citizen involvement and changes to the eligibility requirements on the number of project partners needed.

Elsewhere in its position paper, the Guild sought a more “realistic and flexible approach” to asking researchers what impacts their work might have. It also asked the Commission to clarify the purpose of the European Innovation Council funder of growing companies and business ideas, and asked for more data on the effectiveness of ‘widening’ instruments for supporting countries with lagging performance in the programme.

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University group warns collaborative research is “overprogrammed” in Horizon Europe with funding thinly spread

The European Commission should “dare to adjust or discontinue” elements of the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme that are not successful, according to the League of European Research Universities.

Leru was responding to a public consultation the Commission opened in December on how Horizon Europe has performed since its launch in 2021, the transition from its predecessor Horizon 2020 and priorities for the programme’s final years in 2025-27.

In its response, published on 21 February, Leru said the Commission “needs to carefully evaluate new tools, initiatives and approaches, and to dare to adjust or discontinue what is not deemed successful”.

The group, representing 23 research-intensive universities in 12 European countries, also urged the Commission to make time to consult with researchers, research administrators and stakeholders “before introducing new schemes and approaches”.

Collaboration rethink

Leru said the organisation of collaborative research is “overprogrammed” and called for a “rethink”. It said there are problems with “new approaches being added on top of older ones, instead of replacing them” in the transition from Horizon 2020 to Horizon Europe.

The inclusion of public-private R&I partnerships and the launch of R&I-based missions in pillar 2 of Horizon Europe— which funds a large share of collaborative research—has meant that “only limited funding is available” for other projects, Leru said.

The group added that the R&I missions, which aim to increase the impact of researchers’ work on five major social challenges, “still need to prove they are worth the effort”.

Only the best

Another area that Leru said requires careful evaluation was the “widening” programme for building capacity in countries with less active research sectors.

While calling for the continuation of proven widening schemes, Leru said that “it might be advisable to drop the tools that are shown less successful so that the funding is not spread too thinly”.

Research Professional News has asked the Commission for comment.

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Experts will advise EIC grant winners on intellectual property related to their project

The agency that administers grants from the EU’s European Innovation Council funder is seeking intellectual property experts to provide due diligence services to EIC grantees.

A call for expressions of interest opened last week and remains open until 29 March. The European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency will draw up a list of vetted specialists from the applications.

In a statement, Eismea said the service will seek to cover “a broad range of IP rights, at least trademarks and patents at national, European and international level”.

Applicants must be qualified to work in at least one member state of the EU or European Economic Area and have at least five years of experience as an IP practitioner in one or more areas, including due diligence, audit and portfolio management.

Due diligence services are conducted in English and provided by Eismea with support from the EU Intellectual Property Office.

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Researchers can now apply to lead consortia under R&D programme’s second pillar

Researchers in New Zealand can now apply to the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme in line with the association deal struck last year.

The development means researchers in the country are eligible to apply for funding directly from the programme and to lead proposals for collaborative projects.

“I am glad to share the news that New Zealand researchers and organisations are now able to apply as prospective beneficiaries in pillar 2 Horizon Europe calls,” tweeted Signe Ratso, a senior European Commission official, on 17 February.

Pillar 2 of the programme focuses on industrial competitiveness and on societal challenges such as climate change.

Pending formal completion of New Zealand’s association deal, applications will be considered under a transitional agreement. Association gives non-EU countries access to Horizon Europe on near-equal terms with the bloc’s member states.

New Zealand is the first country outside the European near neighbourhood to agree association to the programme.

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German move finalises multinational protection for intellectual property after years of delay

A single patent that would protect intellectual property across many EU countries is finally set to launch on 1 June, after years of delays.

German ratification on 17 February of the agreement to set up a Unified Patent Court to handle disputes over the unitary patent prompted the European Patent Office to tweet: “The unitary patent system will certainly start on 1 June.”

In an announcement on its website the EPO added that the German move “marks the successful completion of the necessary ratification procedures” and that the system is “ready to enter into operation”.

Easier and cheaper 

The unitary patent is designed to make obtaining intellectual property protection in the EU easier and cheaper than having to apply for IP protection in multiple member states. It will initially cover 17 EU states, with more expected to join at a later date.

Legal challenges in some participating countries, including Germany, have delayed the launch of the system for more than a decade.

The EPO, which will grant the patents, said it has already received “strong interest”. Inventors have filed about 2,200 requests for unitary effect or a delay of grant pending such effect since applications opened in January this year, it said.

“The deposit by Germany opens the door for a new era of IP protection in Europe,” said EPO president António Campinos. “The start of the long-expected system is the result of close cooperation and constructive work of all partners and stakeholders.”

Single IP market

Campinos suggested there will be significant economic benefits to the new patent. “It will be a boon for the European economy as it establishes a uniform technology market facilitating transactions across a big economic region,” he said.

Germany’s justice minister Marco Buschmann said the system will raise European IP protection to “a new level…innovative companies can effectively protect their inventions in the common market in a contemporary way across borders”.

The countries participating in the unitary patent system from the outset are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden.

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Representatives of member states and the Commission will work with a high-level expert group

EU representatives have begun planning the bloc’s next research and innovation programme, which is scheduled to begin in 2028.

The current iteration of the programme, Horizon Europe, runs from 2021 to 2027, has a budget of about €95.5 billion and is currently undergoing a mid-term review.

On 16 February, Austria’s science ministry announced that, three days prior, an ad-hoc taskforce of the European Research Area and Innovation Committee “dedicated to elaborating early advice” on the successor programme had met for the first time.

Erac is a policy advice committee comprised of representatives of member states and the European Commission. The ministry said its new ad-hoc group “agreed on an ambitious agenda for the coming months”.

The group will work with a high-level expert group, which is to be set up in the near future, “to consider the future of research and innovation in Europe”, the ministry said.

They will advise the Commission on its proposal for the next R&I programme. An Erac opinion on this is expected in mid-2024.

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Dutch company ASML reports “unauthorised misappropriation of data” as MEPs progress EU legislation on microchips

The head of a Dutch company that plays a leading role in global microchip manufacturing has warned that increasing geopolitical tension could threaten innovation.

“If countries or trade blocks withdraw into their own territories, then innovation will be less effective and more expensive,” said Peter Wennink (pictured), chief executive of ASML, which makes machines that are crucial for manufacturing advanced microchips.

Wennink’s comments came as countries and regions around the world are scrambling to increase their share of microchip production, and protect their manufacturing chains and intellectual property from foreign interference.

In October, the US restricted exports of advanced semiconductor technologies to China, amid increasing concerns of alleged state-backed surveillance and intellectual property theft from the Asian country. Europe is still figuring out exactly how to respond.

In ASML’s 2022 annual report, published on 15 February, Wennink said the “bifurcation of socio-economic blocks…is threatening the development of the global village that contributed so much to a lot of the innovation we have seen in recent years”.

The report also said ASML had suffered an “unauthorised misappropriation of data” by a former employee in China. It said the company did not think the data leak was “material to our business” but added that the incident may have violated export controls.

Step towards EU legislation

On the same day, the European Parliament said it is ready for talks with EU member state governments on proposed legislation to boost Europe’s semiconductor industry.

Laying the groundwork for those discussions, the Parliament adopted a negotiating position on the draft European Chips Act, with an emphasis on strengthening European innovation.

As part of proposals to boost the EU’s microchip production from below 10 per cent to 20 per cent of global capacity, the bloc is hoping to pool around €11 billion from EU funding, member states, partner countries and the private sector.

MEPs want to encourage European production of next-generation semiconductors and quantum chips, including by “creating a network of centres to address the skills shortage and attract new talent on research, design and production”.

A separate vote saw overwhelming support for creating a Chips Joint Undertaking—a public-private R&D partnership focused on microchip production. This would build on an existing partnership for Key Digital Technologies, upping EU funding from €1.8bn to €4.2bn.

MEP Dan Nica said the legislation should provide “fresh money” and that “the EU should lead in research and innovation, have a business-friendly environment, a fast-permitting process, and invest in a skilled workforce for the semiconductor sector”.

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Europe advised to take “holistic” approach, encompassing research, innovation, education and skills

An EU-funded R&D project is seeking input on its recommendations for a roadmap for European cybersecurity.

The recommendations from the Concordia project call for a “holistic approach” to be taken, encompassing research and education among other things, to strengthen European digital sovereignty—an EU aim.

A project report published this month says that Europe’s current focus on the technological aspect of cybersecurity is “too narrow”. The proposed roadmap makes recommendations for research and innovation, education and skills, legal and policy, economic and investments, certification and standardisation, and community building.

Bringing together 54 institutions from across the EU with €16 million in support from the bloc, the project is asking for feedback on its recommendations, which will then be considered for a forthcoming cybersecurity strategy.

For research and innovation, the recommendations target three main areas: having the means to design and manufacture computers, storing data on cloud servers operating under EU legislation, and ensuring secure internet connectivity.

Other recommendations include developing a comprehensive European skills framework for cybersecurity, mapping existing courses on the topic and increasing opportunities for women in cyber.

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Drug company trade body suggests concerns around intellectual property will push R&D investment elsewhere

Plans to change EU rules on drug development would be “extremely damaging” to the bloc’s pharmaceutical industry, according to a trade body.

The European Commission is expected to publish its plans in the coming weeks, with expressed aims that include supporting innovation and ensuring medicines are accessible and affordable.

However, based on what it said was a leaked draft of the plans, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations said on 10 February that “there should be no doubt that in its current form, this proposed legislation will be extremely damaging to the competitiveness of Europe’s industry and to our region’s strategic autonomy”.

Efpia added: “Despite member state calls for the Commission to support European competitiveness and strategic autonomy, the current text of the revised pharmaceutical legislation would irretrievably sabotage [the] industry.”

Asked for details of the group’s concerns, a spokesperson referred Research Professional News to a November press release it put out, as well as articles written by Efpia leaders this month and last October.

The articles, published by the news organisation Politico, warned against changes to intellectual property rules that industry figures said could negatively affect drug companies. The press release included complaints that the EU spreads its public R&D funding too thinly.

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Swiss institute reports reduced collaboration resulting from loss of access to Horizon Europe

Switzerland’s research sector is being “eroded” by its loss of access to the EU research and innovation programme, Horizon Europe, a leading research institute in the country has warned.

Since 2021, researchers and organisations in Switzerland have been unable to receive funding directly from Horizon Europe or lead on its projects, after the Swiss government walked away from talks on a broad relationship agreement with the EU.

The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne said on 9 February that national measures to compensate for these losses, including through replacement funding, were “reaching their limit”.

Reduced collaboration

EPFL said that in 2022 it was invited to participate in 20 per cent fewer collaborative EU projects than the average for the preceding years, while the drop for Marie Sklodowska-Curie networks for young researchers was 64 per cent.

Two quantum technology projects EPFL had been invited to join were rejected by EU evaluators in 2022, it said, “largely due to the presence of a Swiss partner”.

The institute also flagged the “striking” example of a Swiss startup company moving some of its R&D to France, for reasons EPFL said were “partly linked to the deterioration of the framework conditions in connection with the non-association”.

“The effects on the competitiveness of Swiss research will only be felt in the long term, but the first signs of its erosion are emerging,” the EPFL said, adding that this was “particularly the case” for the institute itself.

Threat to Switzerland, not EU

Jan Palmowski, secretary general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities—which includes the University of Bern as a member—shared the update on Twitter, commenting: “If EU thinks Switzerland is a strategic threat or even risk, then I can only say: wake up and smell the coffee!”

Days earlier, the Swiss National Science Foundation warned that the EU’s exclusion of Switzerland from Horizon Europe “poses a threat to Switzerland as a centre of research and thus also to social and economic progress”.

The SNSF welcomed plans to safeguard for research national funding that was previously allocated for association to the EU programme, but made demands including that the funding should be allocated on a competitive basis.

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European Investment Bank and member states commit €3.75 billion for ‘fund of funds’

The EU’s investment bank and five of its member states have launched a new venture capital fund of funds, with initial commitments totalling €3.75 billion, to help European “technology champions” grow.

Launched on 13 February, the European Tech Champions Initiative is designed to “help plug financing gaps and thus reinforce Europe’s strategic autonomy and competitiveness”, the European Investment Bank said.

The EIB has put up €500 million for the fund of funds, which will invest in venture capital funds that in turn will invest in companies. It said it would “channel much-needed late-stage growth capital to promising European innovators” seeking to raise over €50m. The national backers are Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

“Europe’s tech startups often do not have sufficient capital to compete on a global scale and are pushed to relocate overseas,” the EIB said. “Closing this scale-up gap could create a large number of highly skilled jobs and boost growth.”

According to the EIB, the fund is expected to grow with “further commitments”.

France’s industry minister Bruno Le Maire (pictured at the launch) said the initiative was “a striking example of what we can achieve collectively to strengthen the EU’s economic and industrial sovereignty”.

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Earto raises concerns about budget “instability” and “serious hurdles” for widening measures

A group representing research and technology organisations has raised wide concerns about the design of the EU’s 2021-27 research and innovation programme, Horizon Europe, including budget decisions and measures for boosting underperforming countries.

The European Association of Research and Technology Organisations said on 10 February that it was highlighting “key issues” for the programme with its response to a major consultation on Horizon Europe, which opened in December and is open for feedback until 23 February.

Funding ‘instability’

According to Earto, one problem with the programme is the “instability” of its budget, including as a result of the annual process in which the Council of EU member state governments seeks cuts for the following year and the European Parliament pushes back by demanding extra funding.

“Within the [R&I programme] budget itself, there [have] been many changes in budget allocations proposed every year,” Earto complained, also criticising political pressure to reallocate the programme budget “to new top-down EU policies”, such as support for microchips.

“Such budget instability is detrimental to R&I investments by beneficiaries,” Earto warned.

‘Serious hurdles’ for widening

Another concern Earto flagged related to ‘widening’measures aimed at countries that underperform in winning funding from Horizon Europe.

Earto said the programme’s new ‘hop-on’ instrument, which allows organisations from those countries to join ongoing projects, has “serious hurdles” for those seeking to make use of it.

“Matching a well-developed structure with a potential new participant may require the elaboration of a user-friendly networking system that may include platforms, events, tools and/or a database,” Earto explained.

Other concerns

Earto’s response to the consultation also included concerns about several other elements of Horizon Europe and its implementation.

The association said it is “concerned” about communication between the policymakers who design the programme and the executive agency staff who implement it, specifically that a growing gap between the two is “leading to inadequate policy development”.

Research organisations also struggle to identify synergies between EU R&I funding schemes, while an increased size of collaborative projects has “increased administrative burden”.

Furthermore, Earto reiterated the sector’s previously expressed concerns about the management of intellectual property in the European Innovation Council funder of technology development and a call for the R&D-based missions on topics including cancer and climate change to be rethought to provide better clarity and improved chances for delivering impact.

Lump-sum worries

Separately, Earto also published standalone feedback on European Commission plans to make broader use of the lump-sum funding mode in Horizon Europe.

With this kind of funding, grant applicants are required to provide more information about their plans and must meet agreed goals to unlock funding, but there is less need for financial audits and lower likelihood of budget reporting errors.

Earto said it thinks broader use of lump-sum funding for collaborative Horizon Europe projects would be “premature”.

It said its members are participating in projects funded using the method and have reported “many implementation issues which need to be tackled”, including “a lack of genuine collaboration” among project partners due to “too many work packages and isolated task responsibilities aiming to minimise risks”.

Across Horizon Europe as a whole, Earto wants the European Parliament research committee to carry out an independent analysis of how the programme has evolved and whether its design is optimal.

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Review also urges safeguarding of emergency budgets to help partnerships navigate crises such as Covid-19

More work is needed to ensure that the various EU-supported public-public and public-private partnerships are doing as much as they can to boost the bloc’s overall R&I system, according to a review.

Under the EU’s Horizon Europe R&I programme, there are 49 European Partnerships combining EU funding with that of industry or public authorities across a swathe of topics, including clean hydrogen and global health.

More than €9 billion has been committed for such partnerships through Horizon Europe, with industry committing a further €22 billion.

But a report published on 7 February of a review carried out in November by policymakers and stakeholders warned that more must be done to ensure that partnerships will work with other funding schemes.

Such funding synergies “occur between partnerships” but are also needed with other EU funding instruments like the bloc’s R&I-based missions on cancer, climate change, waters, cities and soil, according to the report.

“Several concrete measures have already been implemented in this direction, while more efforts are needed,” it said. “The challenge is to better address the links between R&I, bringing all relevant stakeholders together.”

Responding to crises

The review also warned that R&I partnerships must not become “too big and complex” to respond to crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

It found that partnerships moved fast and made funds available during the pandemic, but that this caused gaps in funding in other areas.

“We must avoid European Partnerships becoming too big and complex to react and adapt to crises by, for instance, safeguarding parts of the budget for emergencies,” the report said.

The review also covered progress in streamlining the partnerships, after concerns surfaced during Horizon Europe’s predecessor programme that there were too many.

At the November event, Fabienne Gautier from the Commission’s R&I department outlined that “a relatively small second wave of partnerships will be selected” under the upcoming strategic plan for Horizon Europe for 2025-27.

Among the criteria on which new partnerships will be selected are their ability to create funding synergies and to contribute to EU policy priorities.

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Using “buzzwords” and aiming for project outcomes that are “too ambitious” reduces prospect of success

Using “buzzwords” and being “too ambitious” in aiming for project outcomes are “common mistakes” made when applying for funding from the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, one of its administrative agencies has revealed.

Other common problems include forgetting to include ethical considerations, merely paraphrasing the Horizon Europe work programme when setting out expected pathways to impact, and confusing the meanings of results, output and impact, the European Research Executive Agency said in a list of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ for applicants published on 9 February.

The publication of the list comes in the third year of the 2021-27 Horizon Europe programme. The agency said it hoped the list would help applicants “prepare a quality proposal”.

Keep it simple

“Don’t use buzzwords. Try to explain your project in realistic terms,” the agency said. It added: “Don’t oversell your idea with too many or too ambitious outcomes. Don’t ‘overwrite’ your proposal—try to remain simple and straightforward.”

Recommendations for what applicants should do, as opposed to what they should avoid doing, included trying to “explain how the proposed intervention will have a long-term impact on the market, on industry, technology, environment or society in general”.

Another was to demonstrate how a project consortium is well-suited to its task by setting out “the relevant capacities of the organisations and individuals” and adopting a “risk-mitigation approach”.

The agency acknowledged that winning money from Horizon Europe is not easy. “Submitting a project proposal under Horizon Europe is a challenging task that requires careful planning, precise budgeting and a seamless collaboration with partners,” it said.

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Many evaluators will identify people behind proposals they are assessing, policy adviser warns

Research representatives have expressed doubts over the usefulness of blind evaluation of grant proposals, after the EU unveiled plans for a huge trial of the method.

Research Professional News reported this week that the European Commission intends to use the method in all but one of the 2023-24 two-stage calls in the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme. Those assessing grant applications at the first stage will no longer know whose proposal they are considering.

The pilot is intended to see whether blind evaluation would reduce bias towards prestigious institutions and high-profile researchers, and whether there are any negative impacts.

Joep Roet, a policy adviser at Neth-ER, a Dutch research office in Brussels, said he was “sceptical it will change much”.

Several studies have suggested that applicants’ names and gender can influence assessment of their grant applications and research papers, although others have reached the opposite conclusion. Prestige has also been suggested to play a major role in positive assessments.

But Roet said he was unaware that there was any bias among evaluators of EU grant proposals, and he questioned “to what extent evaluations can be truly blind”.

“It’s not you and me who evaluate an astrophysicist or Aramaic philologist, but other astrophysicists and Aramaic philologists,” he pointed out, implying that evaluators of applications from well-established researchers in particular will often be able to identify whose proposal they are assessing.

Applicants will inevitably refer to their past work when explaining their proposals, adding to the chance of their identity being revealed to experts in the area, he suggested.

Need for openness

Sebastian Dahle, vice-president of the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers, said it was “commendable” that the Commission wanted to reduce biases in Horizon Europe. But he suggested that looking at ways to open up evaluation processes would be more beneficial.

One study into research publications has suggested that blinding might actually conceal existing inequalities and allow “irresponsible behaviour during peer review”.

Dahle noted that such work clearly showed the limitations of blind processes and a need for openness.

The Commission declined to comment.

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Agreements with Canada, Faroe Islands and New Zealand could all be blocked by European Parliament

A leading MEP has said the European Commission needs to provide a solution to a “major issue” preventing some non-EU nations from becoming associate members of the bloc’s Horizon Europe R&D programme.

Christian Ehler, a senior member of the European Parlia-ment’s research committee, told Research Europe that the Parliament has concerns about how the deals have been structured for the Faroe Islands and New Zealand.

The deals would apply indefinitely to future EU R&D programmes, he said, scrapping a role for the Parliament to sign off association to each programme. Association gives non-EU countries access to program-mes on almost equal terms to EU member states, in exchange for a budget contribution.

During a January committee session, Ehler (pictured) said the deal for the Faroe Islands was being “blocked” by the Parliament. He told Research Europe that the New Zealand deal was heading the same way. A planned deal with Canada is also understood to face the same issue.

“It is for the Commission to come forward with a proposal on how to solve that,” Ehler said.

The deals would involve joint committees deciding on the nations’ participation in EU programmes without parliamentary involvement. The Parliament laid out its opposition to such a process in 2021.

“Parliament’s opposition to consenting to the agreements is a major issue,” Ehler said, calling for an agreement between the EU institutions that would set out a role for the Parliament.

According to a parliamentary insider, the body representing the various political groups of MEPs has asked the president of the Parliament to discuss the issue with the Commission.

Ehler said the agreements were “too political” for the Parliament not to have a say for each programme.

“The Commission has created very difficult situations regarding Faroe Islands and New Zealand because it has concluded agreements for which it knew it would not get Parliamentary consent,” he said.

The Commission declined to comment but Research Europe understands that the structure of the deals was directed by
the Council of EU member state governments.

For now, the Faroe Islands can take part in Horizon Europe while the ratification of its deal is pending, and the same will be true for New Zealand.

But a parliamentary insider said that if no solution is found, the Parliament could vote down the agreements.

Loveday Kempthorne, from New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, said that “discussion around this approval is a natural and welcome part of the democratic process”.

A Canadian government spokesperson said the country was “monitoring developments regarding Horizon Europe”.  

This article also appeared in Research Europe and a version appeared in Research Fortnight

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European University Association calls for a less “utilitarian” approach to R&D impact

A group representing European universities is to push policymakers to take a less “utilitarian” approach to considering the impacts of R&D and adopt a broader view of innovation.

The European University Association on 7 February published an agenda on how it would support innovation in the higher education sector up until 2026, saying it would “pursue key demands” on policymakers, funders and universities themselves.

These demands include taking a broader view of innovation, the EUA said, because policymakers “do not always recognise [the] multifaceted nature of innovation, nor do they demonstrate sufficient awareness of it”.

The association said it was “important to foster favourable conditions for innovation” rather than focusing “purely” on the outcomes of innovation, such as new technologies.

Mission critical

Against a backdrop of global competition for emerging technologies, the EU has put an increased emphasis on supporting innovation through its Horizon Europe R&I programme.

As part of Horizon Europe, the EU has adopted five R&I-based missions aimed at increasing the impact of researchers’ work on major social challenges, covering climate, cancer, oceans, cities and soil.

But the EUA said that an increasing focus of R&I policies on directionality and mission-driven approaches “risks detracting from curiosity-driven research in favour of more utilitarian notions of impact”.

“Long-term oriented research, including curiosity-driven research, should be recognised as the prerequisite of truly revolutionary, rather than purely incremental, innovation,” the EUA added.

Long-term endeavour

The group’s president, Michael Murphy, said that the EUA would increase its work in innovation and “recognises that it will be a long-term endeavour”.

“Unfortunately, innovation is not yet fully embedded in the operation of all universities, even when they clearly identify it as a strategic priority,” he added.

As well as broadening the understanding of innovation, the EUA outlined two more priority areas: institutional innovation capacity, competence and culture; and universities as honest brokers in innovation for a sustainable future.

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Competition increases among applicants for European Research Council grants for multiple principal investigators

The European Research Council has reported an increase in the popularity of its Synergy Grants in 2023 compared with the previous year.

The 2023 call received 395 applications, the ERC announced on 6 February, compared with 358 applications in 2022.

With the funder expecting to award about 30 grants—similar to last year—this means the success rate is likely to drop below the 2022 figure of 8.1 per cent. The ERC has earmarked €300 million for the 2023 call.

Synergy Grants are the ERC’s only grant type given to teams rather than individual researchers. Between two and four principal investigators may apply for the grants, which are worth up to €10m over six years, with an additional €4m available for relocation and equipment costs.

The ERC said that of the 1,350 principal investigators applying to the 2023 call, the largest number came from German (197) and Italian (143) universities and research centres. Women make up 27 per cent of principal investigators in the proposed projects, the ERC said, which is similar to the level recorded in 2022.

Winners will be announced in the autumn.

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Working groups set to discuss clean-tech research and critical industrial components

The EU and India have set up a Trade and Technology Council to “deepen strategic engagement” on topics of joint interest.

On 6 February, the European Commission announced that the council would have three working groups focused on “strategic technologies, digital governance and digital connectivity”, “green and clean energy technologies” and “trade, investment and resilient value chains”.

Meeting for the first time in the coming weeks, the groups will discuss issues such as artificial intelligence and high-performance computing; green technologies “with emphasis on research and innovation”; and access to critical industrial components.

“The EU and India have strengthened their relationship as strategic partners,” the Commission said. It added that the bloc’s partnership with India was “one of the most important relationships for the upcoming decade” and that strengthening it was a priority.

It said cooperation should focus on “key issues of shared strategic importance” and that, in particular, working together on research and innovation was “important to unlock potential”.

The EU-India TTC is the second such forum for the bloc, after a similar council was launched with the United States in 2021. 

EU-India ministerial meetings organised under the council are expected to take place at least once a year, with the first to be held this spring.

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