One year ago, the European Commission published the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), its proposed budget framework for 2028-34, including the next Horizon Programme (FP10) and the new and closely connected European Competitiveness Fund (ECF).
Since then, the EU co-legislators—the European Council representing the member states, and the European Parliament—have developed their responses to these proposals. In April, the Parliament’s rapporteurs for FP10 published their suggestions for improvement, and we expect the Parliament’s agreed position by October.
Meanwhile, the Council has agreed a partial general approach on FP10, an agreed position by science ministers on all issues not reserved for high-level discussions, including budget items.
Here are the key issues to watch for in upcoming political discussions:
First, and most important, is budget. The Commission had proposed €175bn, with the European Parliament pushing for €200bn over the seven-year period. But in June, the Cypriot Council presidency suggested a disproportionate 4 per cent cut to the Commission’s proposal, with key member states looking for much deeper cuts to the MFF as a whole, including Horizon Europe. If the original proposal of €175bn is reduced, it will dramatically change the programme’s ambition and its capacity to propel Europe to the top of global competitiveness in R&I.
Another key issue is the relationship between FP10 and the ECF, a new programme designed to address Europe’s weakness in scaling up innovative technologies. All agree that the programmes must be closely connected, but university representatives have insisted that the ECF as a scale-up fund has a very different intervention logic from FP10, which has to be about pushing back frontiers in R&I. That requires different timelines, different participation rules and different expertise involved in writing calls and assessing proposals.
Governance rulebook
Unfortunately, the Commission has proposed a single governance mechanism with a single rulebook and a joint programming process between the ECF and the second, challenge-led collaborative pillar in FP10 dedicated to competitiveness. While the Parliament echoes the joint universities’ position on the involvement of different specialists in the ECF and FP10, the Council wants to strengthen further the influence of member states in the process.
Other questions about the connection between the ECF and FP10 loom large. The Commission proposes that for research collaboration in sensitive areas with non-EU partners, EU preference rules may apply. But these rules are articulated in the ECF. Therefore, questions around research security could be determined by commercial exclusion criteria, rather than by careful risk management that weighs the potential consequences of collaboration against those of non-collaboration.
The final issue concerns defence research. The Commission and the Council agree that defence R&I could also be funded by the European Innovation Council (EIC) in FP10, whereas university organisations have argued that military R&I should be funded through the ECF.
For countries that choose not to associate to the security policy window of the ECF, how will this affect their participation in collaborative research within the security policy window of FP10? The Commission proposes that to participate in EIC-related defence activities, third countries must be associated to the defence activities of the ECF. Does this imply similar restrictions for dual-use calls in FP10?
Budget questions remain
Questions remain around what proportion of the FP10 budget will be allocated to which instruments, and whether money from associated countries will flow back to those instruments where they participate most. Both issues are essential for the transparent governance of FP10.
Both the Council and the Parliament have come out strongly to defend against any limitation to the autonomy of the European Research Council, proposing to strengthen the Scientific Council and the mandate of the ERC president. It is critical that the Commission accepts both in full, rather than insisting on a compromise.
It is to the Commission’s credit that it has introduced a societies component in FP10, to complement the competitiveness focus of Horizon Europe’s second pillar. Horizon Europe is also committed to the integration of social science and humanities disciplines across the entire programme. But how we make sure that this happens effectively, so that Horizon Europe points to a future not just around complex technologies but one that citizens want and cherish: that is still a big challenge—not just for policymakers, but also for researchers and evaluators.
A year ago, the Commission surprised us with a positive proposal for FP10 that lacked detail but was ambitious, committed to strengthening fundamental and applied research across all disciplines, and determined to put R&I at the centre of the MFF. A year on, and the proposal could be better still. That must be the key focus of the coming academic year. The trilogues when the Commission, Council and Parliament thrash out the final text cannot begin soon enough.
This article was originally published by Research Professional.
Jan Palmowski
Secretary-General of The Guild – A contemporary historian, he started his career at the University of Oxford before moving to King’s College London where he taught European politics and EU integration. He was Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Warwick from 2013 to 2017. In this blog space, Prof. Palmowski engages with some of the wider questions around research, education, innovation and the EU. The views expressed here are his and not those of The Guild.