Horizon Europe: Introducing the EU’s New Framework Programme

If we say that 2020 is extremely important for European Union (EU) and its citizens, then we would not exaggerate. Including (post)-Brexit challenges, COVID-19 pandemic, the closure of the latest framework program for research and innovation Horizon 2020 (H2020) and uncertain budget for the upcoming seven years, it becomes clear that whatever the outcome, it will be crucial for setting the direction in which research and development will evolve.

European framework — buzzword since the 1980s

Once upon a time, the EU started supporting individual researchers and the consortia of research organizations, universities and businesses. Since the early 1980s, it has been doing so through multiannual funding programs known as “framework programs for research and innovation”. The EU and researchers became accustomed to them and were at least satisfied.

To have a bigger impact on society in general and to move towards new discoveries in science, the EU launches a new framework program every seven years. With nearly €80 billion in funding, H2020 was the biggest research and innovation program of the EU available from 2014 to 2020. The 9th Framework Programme, also known as Horizon Europe, will replace the framework program Horizon 2020 (H2020), as of January 2021.

If the word “framework” already curls your hair, then do not worry because we have got you covered. We will give you the overview of the new research and innovation program Horizon Europe, explain its novelties and tackle its controversies in this article.

So, what is Horizon Europe?

The 9th Framework Programme or Horizon Europe was proposed in June 2018 by the European Commission with a €100 billion budget as a part of the EU-long-term-budget Multiannual Financial Framework for the years 2021 – 2027. The European Parliament and Council reached a political agreement and the endorsed provisional agreement on Horizon Europe in March/April 2019.

Although its budget is still under construction as we write this article (March 2020), we know that it should fit into the vision of the European Commission, considering Horizon Europe and its scope as “ the most ambitious research and innovation program ever that will keep the EU at the forefront of global research and innovation”.

As officially stated, the main objectives of Horizon Europe are the following:

• strengthening the EU’s scientific and technological foundations and European Research Area (ERA)
• increasing innovation capacity, competitiveness and the number of jobs in Europe
• fulfilling citizens’ priorities and maintaining socioeconomic model and value

The question is “How to achieve them”?

Horizon Europe: “Evolution, not revolution”

Even if it will be the most ambitious R&I program ever, there will not be any surprises in its structure. According to Jean-Eric Paquet, the EU’s Director for Research and Innovation, “the overall structure is clearly emerging and is largely based on the existing structure of H2020”. Jean-Eric Paquet emphasized back then that the work on Horizon Europe’s program is based on Pascal Lamy’s report on the H2020 and his mantra: “Evolution, not revolution”. What he did not mention was if they are also working to accomplish the budget of €120 billion, proposed by the European Parliament for Horizon Europe, or to satisfy the Commission’s proposal of €94.1 billion, which would make a significant difference for enhancing research and innovation.

As in the H2020 program, the base of three pillars will remain, keeping the excellence at the core, maintaining the tested funding rules and procedures.

Source: European Commission

Previously known as Excellent Science, in Horizon Europe, the first pillar becomes Open Science pillar. Regardless of its new name in Horizon Europe, pillar one means that scientific excellence should still be driven through the European Research Council (ERC) and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowships and exchange.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) funds research training activities led by individual researchers. The grants are allocated to researchers of any nationality, at any stage of their careers and working in any discipline. It has four different strands: individual fellowships, innovative training networks, research and staff exchange, doctoral and fellowship programs.

These mono beneficiary actions are particularly important for individual researchers, meaning that one entity is responsible for the implementation of the action, whilst the consortia of research organizations should gain funding from multi-beneficiary actions that fund projects by a group of beneficiaries, normally from different EU and associated countries where several entities are responsible for the same cause.

Industrial Leadership or pillar two from H2020 in Horizon Europe has the longest name — Global Challenges and Industrial Competitiveness. Joint Research Centre (JRC), as the Commission’s science and knowledge service, will continue to provide scientific advice and technical support. The second pillar also represents one of Horizon Europe’s biggest novelties — five new clusters or mission areas.

Five areas to be challenged in Horizon Europe

Horizon Europe defined five mission areas. Missions are defined as sets of actions aimed for a bold and measurable goal within a fixed time frame that have an impact on science, technology and society in general. A mission board of 15 members will be assigned for each mission. They will co-design the mission with associated calls for projects with member states, stakeholders, the European Parliament and citizens.

This mission area deals with the process of climate adaptation or adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects and will support it by connecting citizens with science and public policy.

The number of people newly diagnosed with cancer every year in Europe will increase from the current 3.5 million to more than 4.3 million by 2035 if no further action is taken. The main objective of this mission area is to help set common goals for the purpose of reversing these trends in cancer.

According to the European Commission, oceans, seas and coastal and inland waters are the planet’s largest carbon sink and have absorbed 26% of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Nevertheless, they also provide benefits associated with our well-being, cultural values, tourism, trade and transport. The focus of this mission will be to find a way to raise awareness of their importance amongst citizens and help develop solutions on a range of issues.

Bear in mind that almost 80% of people will live in urban areas by 2050. Cities and metropolitan areas are centers of economic activity, knowledge generation, innovation and new technologies. It drives several major challenges in the evolution of urban centers, especially towards environmental and societal issues. Thus, this mission will work on meeting the goals and targets set out by international policy frameworks, such as the COP21 Paris Agreement, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the Urban Agenda for the EU and the Habitat III New Urban Agenda.

Soils are also massively affected by climate change, erosion and sea level rises. Approximately 33% of our global soils are degraded, and in the EU, erosion is affecting 25% of agricultural land. A mission in this area should also provide a powerful tool to raise awareness of its importance, which should have a direct impact on the success of the new European Commission’s Green Deal and its ambition to progress on climate, biodiversity and sustainable food.

The definition of these five mission areas is raising considerable attention. “How missions are going to work for basic research is very unclear. Of course, we care for societal issues, but without research, it would be very difficult to make any improvement”, said Prof. Martin Andler, President of the Initiative for Science in Europe, commenting on the potential share of Horizon Europe’s budget between new mission areas.

The way sources were divided for fundamental research in H2020 “was not satisfactory”, stresses Prof. Martin Andler. Nevertheless, he believes that “there will still be progress in the Horizon Europe program” because the program itself was announced as an improved version of H2020 to maximize its impact, its relevance to society and its potential for breakthrough innovation. How?

Improving Horizon 2020’s good features

Following the changes in three pillars, Horizon Europe offered ways of implementing the recommendations from the H2020 Interim Evaluation. The goal is to enhance the good features and improve weaker ones from H2020.

European Innovation Council — once a pilot project, now the real thing

One of the new features Horizon Europe had already introduced as a pilot project is the European Innovation Council (EIC), which will complement the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).

On the basis of the fact that Europe must deepen its innovation and risk-taking capability to compete on a market increasingly defined by new technologies, the EIC is providing direct support to innovators through two complementary funding instruments. First one of them is Pathfinder, imagined as a science-driven exploration engine for radically new technologies.

The EIC’s Pathfinder should promote collaborative, interdisciplinary research and innovation on science-inspired and radically new future technologies. Its grants are for the consortia of at least three entities from three different member states and associated countries, referring to the non-EU country that has entered into an “association agreement” with the EU, to participate its specific fund or funding program.

Pathfinder will be based on Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Open and FET Proactive schemes from the previous H2020 program. FET Open is covering all topics and research areas, focusing on early stages of research and calls for collaboration and innovation actions that satisfy its “gatekeepers”: radical vision, breakthrough technological target and ambitious interdisciplinary research. Networking, coaching and mentoring stand out as the key benefits of this scheme, especially aimed at small to medium enterprises (SMEs). It will complement the FET Proactive scheme that nurtures emerging themes, encouraging researchers from different disciplines to work together on new technologies in specific themes.

EIC’s second instrument Accelerator offers grants and “ blended finance” for development and market deployment. It will thus provide support to high-risk, high-potential small- and medium-sized innovative enterprises who are willing to develop and commercialise new products, services and business models. By doing so, the main objective is to drive economic growth and shape new markets or disrupt existing ones in Europe and worldwide. Accelerator provides full-cycle business innovation support and coaching and mentoring.

Developing the Eastern European countries

When it comes to improving the good base of H2020, more funding for sharing excellence is foreseen. Therefore, the EU13 — countries that have been members of the EU since 2004 (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) — should have enhanced their chances of funding.

Very important novelty for Eastern European countries is that they should be supported with double the amount of what they had in H2020 to make the most of their national research and innovation potential. This decision is of great significance and one of the major improvements that Horizon Europe should bring because the money in the H2020 program was being allocated on excellence criteria and not on geographic origin.

Moreover, Horizon Europe’s extended association possibilities should ensure that third countries with good capacity in science, technology and innovation become more eligible for international participation.

Open Science and Open Access — Imperatives of Horizon Europe

The principle of Open Science will become the modus operandi of Horizon Europe, requiring open access to publications and data, which will assist market uptake and increase the innovation potential of results generated by EU funding. Better dissemination and exploitation of R&I results are one of the ways with which the objective of the active engagement of society should be reached.

Scientists and researchers should also be able to use the European Open Science Cloud during Horizon Europe. According to the European Commission, it is “a virtual environment with free at the point of use, open and seamless services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data, across borders and scientific disciplines”.

Giving the opportunity to share data from ongoing research, this kind of a cloud that is specially made for the research community should make collaborations between them easier, as well as to familiarize citizens with their results. Open Science policies and open access to scientific publications go hand in hand in supporting the digital revolution in Europe, underlined as well in the program of Horizon Europe.

“This idea of openness, especially between researchers and scientists, is perhaps the H2020’s greatest success”, concludes one of the researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials from Bremen, Germany.

More partnership possibilities for more efficiency

To increase the effectiveness and impact in achieving EU policy priorities, Horizon Europe will also consolidate the number of partnerships that the EU co-programmes or co-funds with partners, such as industry, civil society and funding foundations.

Horizon Europe will support European partnerships with EU countries — the private sector, foundations and other stakeholders. The aim is to deliver on global challenges and industrial modernization through concerted research and innovation efforts.

The Horizon Europe proposal lays down the conditions and principles for establishing European Partnerships. Three types are proposed:

Co-programmed European Partnerships

Commission and private/public partners — based on the memoranda of understanding/contractual arrangements

Co-funded European Partnerships

Using a program co-found action, these are partnerships involving EU countries, with research funders and other public authorities at the core of the consortium

Institutionalised European Partnerships

These are partnerships where the EU participates in research and innovation funding programs that are undertaken by many EU countries. They are based on article 185 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which allows the EU to participate in such programs.

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These can also be public-private partnerships established under Article 187 TFEU, such as joint undertakings or EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities. These partnerships will only be implemented where other parts of the Horizon Europe program would not achieve the objectives desired or expected impacts.

However, Horizon Europe will promote effective and operational links with other future EU programs, such as Cohesion Policy, the European Defence Fund, the Digital Europe Programme and the Connecting Europe Facility, as well as with the international fusion energy project ITER.

Promoting European mobility and exchanges

Part of the efforts in increasing the number of partnerships in Europe, a number of co-programmes or co-funds with partners, such as industry, civil society and funding foundations, will be extended. The EU student exchange Erasmus program is one of them.

ERASMUS stands for EuRopean community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students. It was established in 1987, and since then, it counted more than nine million participants, including students and staff. One of the facts that highlights the importance of this program for overall good collaboration and excellence in Europe is the number of 290,000 students who have undertaken an Erasmus traineeship since 2007 in companies, almost 80% of them being SMEs.

What about Horizon Europe’s budget?

If everything mentioned sounds ambitious in terms of financing for 27 member states to agree on, then you are correct. At the moment of writing this article, the long-term EU budget, of which Horizon Europe is part of, still rocks the boat.

Scientists, researchers and organizations have been trying to prevent the shipwreck and avoid further cuts of the proposed €100 billion budget for Horizon Europe. The proposed budget allocation of €100 billion for 2021 – 2027 included €97.6 billion under Horizon Europe (€3.5 billion of which will be allocated under the InvestEU Fund) and €2.4 billion for the Euratom Research and Training Programme.

For the next multiannual financial framework to be agreed upon, it must be unanimously agreed by the European Council and approved by the European Parliament. The trickiest part is that each member state has veto power, which can postpone the planned implementation of Horizon Europe.

The current battle is between the “Frugal Four” (Austria, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands) who support the idea that the next long-term EU budget should amount to 1% of the 27-nation trading bloc’s gross national income (GNI). Charles Michel, President of the European Council, advocates for a slightly bigger budget with 1.074% of GNI. The European Commission prefers 1.11%, whilst the European Parliament has the most ambitious idea of 1.3% of GNI for the EU budget.

“To expand the capacity for research and innovation, you need to have money. The more money you have, the better opportunities you have and vice versa. Member States (respectively their governments) are simply not capable of promoting the added value of EU-programmes”, comments one of the researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials from Bremen, Germany. Many scientists and researchers share his opinion.

Advocates of a larger and more appropriate budget

Scientists and researchers have started questioning their future if Horizon Europe’s budget faces significant cuts from the proposed €100 billion budget. One of the most known initiatives for advocating the bigger budget comes in the form of a petition from the previously mentioned Initiative for Science in Europe.

“Head of the governments have been working on the budget decision since fall in 2019. The current situation is far from what we need. In order for governments to feel the pressure, we need scientists to show how important this is”, says Prof. Martin Andler, President of the Initiative for Science in Europe.

The EU budget is, in the end, the decision of the national heads of states and governments and “that is the reason why we have publishedthe petition in as many European languages we could. So far there are more than 3000 individuals, mostly scientific individuals and more than 100 organizations who have signed it”, concludes Prof. Martin Andler, hoping that the outcome of this situation will be satisfactory for the R&I community.

The European University Association (EUA) is part of 15 European associations of universities who have joined efforts to call for an ambitious Horizon Europe budget that would invest in excellent, cross-border research and innovation. Together, they represent more than 800 universities in Europe who had signed the petition for raising the Horizon Europe’s budget to at least €120 billion.

The importance of Horizon Europe’s budget has also been stressed by the EUA’s newest publication Public Funding Observatory Report 2019/20 that gives an overview of the latest public funding developments (2018 – 2019), emphasizing the statistics on the feasibility and success of the H2020 program and stating how approximately 88% of H2020 proposals remain unfunded. Official numbers provided by the European Commission in a publication from 2017 about the success of H2020 support this fact. It states that the overall success rate of eligible full proposals is 12.6% and how only one in four proposals was funded. Overall, 13,903 grant agreements were signed, with an EU contribution of €24.8 billion.

The mystery continues on Horizon Europe budget

Without sufficient amounts of money in the EU long-term budget intended for the Horizon Europe program, many of its features will possibly not see the light of the day. As the budget for Horizon Europe depends on the next multiannual financial framework, it means that we should know more after the next special European Council summit that is foreseen for the beginning of March 2020.However, if we compare the current situation regarding the finalisation of Horizon Europe with the same process for H2020, we can conclude that we are already late with it, risking promptly implemented program in January 2021.

According to Marta Pilati’s comment for European Policy Centre: “The current MFF (2014-20) was agreed upon in February 2013, and the implementation of programs delayed in 2014. The second half (or possibly the end) of 2020 could be the moment for a conclusive discussion, inevitably leading to delays in 2021 or even 2022. The risk of a complete shutdown of the EU institutions and programs is becoming conceivable”.

Moreover, even when we will be familiar with Horizon Europe final budget, there are still questions to be answered when it comes to budget share for mission areas and how the money will be shared amongst each member state.

With its main objective of raising EU science spending levels by 50% during the Horizon Europe program, the proposed budget of €100 billion came under the question and was affected by the new geopolitical situation that arose with Brexit and coronavirus pandemic.

European Commission in May 2020 proposed the new MFF and “Next Generation EU”, which is the new EU “Covid-19” recovery instrument. Currently, the proposed budget for Horizon Europe is €94.4 billion. Still, it is not clear how the money will be allocated, as the MFF indicates that of the €94.4 billion, €13.5 billion comes under the “Next Generation EU” package. The European Council should reach political agreement on the next MFF by the end of July 2020.

Horizon Europe without the UK in sight?

UK’s start-ups have now one less financial source available, referring to the EU policies after Brexit. Nevertheless, British researchers were important partners in forming consortia and significant beneficiaries of H2020, leaving a budget hole in the EU of €75 billionfor the period of the next seven years.

Still, whether or not the UK will be able to participate in Horizon Europe (and how) should be revealed during negotiations with the EU. At the end of February 2020, the European Council authorized the opening of negotiations for a new partnership option with the UK which nominated the European Commission as EU negotiator. The UK is currently in a transition period until 31 December 2020 where it still applies Union law but is no longer represented in the EU institutions.

“The UK has been extremely successful in attracting extraordinary scientists from all over the world, especially in the ERC funding. The UK had also benefited a lot from H2020 and Brexit is a pity for the improvement of science in the EU”, concludes Prof. Martin Andler, hoping that the UK will join the Horizon Europe program.

“It’s not only that the cake is bigger than before, but that the guy that was eating more of that cake is not anymore around the table”, as one of the Commission members commented on Brexit for Politico, sums up this situation, with no quick solution in sight.

Horizon Europe in brief: openness and collaboration for excellence

Even if there are still some uncertainties about the Horizon Europe program, specifically budget and money distribution, we can underline some of its main remarks. As “ the most ambitious research and innovation program ever” that should keep the EU at the forefront of global research and innovation, it will:

• Improve the good features of H2020 by encouraging collaboration and offering more specific partnership possibilities
• Apply the Open Science policies to make R&I results more visible, for scientists and citizens
• Tackle specific problems in five mission areas, constantly raising public awareness on those issues
• Distribute funds more equally, meaning that the underdeveloped countries and third countries should be more eligible to apply for calls

And all that, aiming to improve European position on a global scale when it comes to research and innovation. The purpose will also be to engage with society through better dissemination and use of R&I results.

If you are looking for partnerships, Scientist can help you out in this process. By registering your lab or service, Scientist helps you to obtain more visibility to potential partners in Europe and beyond. Signing up is free of charge.

Keeping up with the news

Whilst we are still waiting for the budget and details of implementation to be revealed, there are numerous websites where you can follow the previous and future European Council negotiations live. Here are some of them:

• Politico
• European Policy Centre
• Europa Media

Twitter is also a great place to follow such events, providing you with bits of information directly from main actors, in this case European Council members and member states heads, as well as its critique from other users. Follow #HEBudget, #HorizonEU, #EUBudget, #MFF, and #EUCO for the latest updates on Horizon Europe.