The Guild urges for a future-oriented outlook on FP10. The framework programme must be geared towards building Europe’s competitiveness and resilience based on its scientific leadership. A core principle of FP10 is to strengthen research excellence by nurturing researchers’ creativity and curiosity. The framework programme needs to focus on research and innovation activities and position knowledge creation as a key objective for all its programmes and instruments, whilst building synergies with other EU programmes (including European Regional Development Fund, Erasmus+, EU4Health, etc.) to increase national, regional and institutional capacities for research and knowledge valorisation and to accelerate the deployment of new innovations.
Our position on FP10 pivots around seven main principles:
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Ensure an ambitious and stable budget. The Guild reiterates its calls for a budget of at least 200 billion euro and ringfencing it to avoid that short-term policy goals result in sudden shifts in budget allocations.
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Build on the instruments that have already demonstrated their effectiveness in strengthening Europe’s scientific excellence. Because of their well-evidenced outstanding success in fostering scientific excellence, attracting and retaining talents, and laying the grounds for groundbreaking innovations, the European Research Council and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions must be anchored in FP10 and benefit from a higher budget to expand their impacts.
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Leverage researchers’ creativity in challenge-oriented projects. FP10 must guarantee funding for collaborative and low-TRL research and tap further into the potential of social sciences, arts and humanities to address societal challenges. We also strongly warn against calls that are prescriptive regarding content, expected outcomes, impacts and types of collaboration expected.
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Embed innovation in scientific excellence. Researchers must be empowered to select and carry out the knowledge valorisation they deem the most relevant. Instead of exclusively focusing on industrial policy priorities, the European Innovation Council must be open to all promising ideas and provide researchers easy access to proof-of-concept funding to develop these ideas.
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Safeguard research excellence through academic freedom and openness. A core principle for FP10 must be to limit the scope for research and innovation only in exceptional and well-justified cases. The development of dual-use research should not be prescribed by policymakers because such directionality may impose constraints detrimental to researchers’ creativity and academic freedom.
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Further facilitate international cooperation. It is crucial that FP10 remains open to the world and recognizes Switzerland and the United Kingdom as preferential partners, whose association is in our mutual interest. It should also cultivate a spirit of collective academic responsibility and risk-management for a self-regulation towards responsible internationalisation.
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Strengthen research excellence across Europe and reduce the R&I gap. Instruments aimed at Widening countries must be maintained in FP10 to improve their performance and capacities to become R&I leaders. We recommend expanding the instruments with proven success, mainstreaming widening elements across FP10, and prioritising synergies with Cohesion Policy.
We translated these principles into concrete recommendations for the future framework programme.
Ole Petter Ottersen, Acting Secretary-General at The Guild: “It is not an exaggeration to say that the next framework program will shape our future – our resilience and cohesion as a society, our competitiveness, our well-being, and our opportunity – as individuals – to realize our full potential. To take us to where we want to be in the future we will need to invest in world-leading fundamental research, nurture the innovative spirit, and fully integrate the social sciences, arts, and the humanities while recognizing the need to close the technology gap. Academic freedom must be respected as a prerequisite for societal progress, and global academic cooperation must be safeguarded and strengthened based on the principle of responsible internationalisation. We are all interconnected through the challenges we are facing, and we all need to be interconnected in finding the solutions.”
15 May 2024
Related publications:
The Guild's recommendations for Horizon Europe's past, present and future
Key messages for FP10 - 28 June 2023