In discussing her priorities, the Commissioner emphasized the importance of securing an ambitious budget for Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe as her number one priority. Subsequently, a number of issues of key concerns to The Guild were discussed, including the importance of frontier research for addressing our key challenges. In The Guild’s opinion instruments supporting frontier-led science require generous support, through an ambitious budget for the European Research Council and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions. The Guild also stressed the need for the second, challenge-led pillar of Horizon Europe (‘Global Challenges) to bring together the best minds in Europe at all levels of research, from frontier to applied research.
The Guild emphasized the importance of the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) and the importance of integrating SSH across the programme in order to address our major societal challenges. This should be coupled with a prominent budget for the ‘Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society’ cluster of Horizon Europe, as we need strong research on democracy, culture, and the resilience of our societies in and economies.
Finally, another key theme discussed was the importance of excellence. The Guild emphasized its commitment to Widening Participation, as it is critical to enable a higher rate of participation in excellent-based instruments in Horizon from researchers in lower performing countries. But The Guild also affirmed the need for Europe to have world-class universities, and to strengthen excellence to ensure European researchers are ahead in key areas of research, for instance through European knowledge hubs, proposed by The Guild.
Speaking after the meeting, Jan Palmowski said: ‘We are grateful for the opportunity to exchange views with the Commissioner so early on in her term of office. Our members fully support her focus on an ambitious budget for Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe. And we welcome her real determination to achieve synergies – not just on paper, but also in practice, to ensure the instruments that we have achieve much bigger effects together.’
Very fruitful discussion with @janpalmowski @guildeu on strengthening #EuropeanResearchArea & link with #EuropeanEducationArea, #SSH, on synergies between #research, #innovations & #education! Thanks for your support for ambitions budget of @EUHorizon & @EUErasmusPlus ! pic.twitter.com/nI3V5p7QWi
— Mariya Gabriel (@GabrielMariya) January 21, 2020