Fears for ‘end of EU R&I programme as we know it’

Senior research figures alarmed by conspicuous lack of clarity in commissioner mission letters

Senior figures have expressed concern that the EU’s research and innovation funding programme is to be broken up in a manner that would leave it less than the sum of its parts.

Among those expressing fears are Kurt Deketelaere, secretary-general of the League of European Research Universities, an association of 24 institutions, including the universities of Cambridge and Oxford in the UK, ETH Zurich in Switzerland and the EU-based universities of Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Helsinki.

“Revolution is coming, not evolution,” Deketelaere warned in remarks to Research Professional News, which expanded on a call he launched on social media for clarification about the situation from the European Commission.

The fears were prompted by mission letters that Commission president Ursula von der Leyen wrote for each of the politicians put forward to join her in leading the institution for the next five-year political cycle, as well as rumours that the letters have sparked among sector leaders.

Among his specific points, Deketelaere told RPN he had heard “a lot of rumours about the disappearance of Pillar 2”, the part of the current EU R&I programme, Horizon Europe, that is focused on global challenges and industrial competitiveness.

Horizon Europe, which has a budget of €93.5 billion for 2021-27, has three main pillars, with Pillar 1 focused on science excellence, encompassing the European Research Council and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), and Pillar 3 focused on innovation, including the European Innovation Council.

With the programme due to end in a few years, plans are already underway for the design of what was expected to be its successor, currently known as Framework Programme 10. But the mission letters and the rumours circulating have some wondering whether there will even be a successor programme along the lines of those the sector has come to expect, which have encompassed the ERC since its launch in 2007 and the EIC since 2021.

“Do we see the end of the Framework Programme as we have known it for decades?” Deketelaere asked on social media, along with his call for clarification.

Questions about Pillar 2

The mission letter for Ekaterina Zaharieva, the commissioner-designate for startups, research and innovation, refers to the Framework Programme as a whole only once, when it says: “You will lead the implementation and oversee the allocation of funding from EU R&I programmes, such as Horizon Europe.”

A similar degree of attention was devoted to the programme in the mission letter for current R&I commissioner Iliana Ivanova, but the coming Commission term is distinct from the previous one in that overseeing the design of the successor programme was expected to be a major task for the incoming research commissioner.

Zaharieva has been tasked with overseeing an expansion of the ERC and EIC, with a focus on “groundbreaking fundamental research and disruptive innovation”, which are the two funders’ respective remits.

That has sparked questions in particular over what is currently Pillar 2 of Horizon Europe, which funds collaborative R&I projects organised through thematic ‘clusters’ focused on topics including health, digitalisation and climate. It includes much of the funding devoted to controversial R&I-based ‘missions’, which were introduced to Horizon Europe with the aim of achieving specific targets in areas including cancer and climate change.

Pillar 2 specifically is addressed only obliquely in the Zaharieva mission letter, which directs her to “intensify our efforts to make sure EU missions achieve all their goals by 2030, and that all the instruments of our Framework Programmes, such as Joint Undertakings [co-funding schemes], are used to their full potential”.

Many academic organisations have said that Pillar 2, as the main collaborative part of the Framework Programme, should be more focused on basic research and less on near-to-market or applied research. Its future is one element on which Deketelaere is calling for “urgent clarification” from the Commission.

Rumours over MSCA

Also conspicuously absent from the Zaharieva mission letter is any mention of the MSCA, which primarily funds doctoral education and postdoctoral training as part of Pillar 1 of Horizon Europe.

Deketelaere told RPN of a rumour that the MSCA would be moved to the EU’s Erasmus+ programme, which is currently focused on student mobility. Earlier this month, former Italy prime minister Mario Draghi published a landmark report on EU competitiveness that recommended, among many other things, that Erasmus+ should be extended to researcher mobility.

Draghi also recommended that two new schemes be created under the ERC: one to directly fund research institutions and another to fund top researchers who could move freely between institutions. Mattias Björnmalm, secretary-general of the Cesaer group of European science and technology universities, previously told RPN he was “surprised” by all three of these suggestions because much of what they call for “is ongoing, either directly or indirectly, through the MSCA” at present.

Uncertainty over European Competitiveness Fund

Counterintuitively, the concerns also relate to an elevation of competitiveness and R&I to the highest level of EU priorities, in response to concerns that the EU is falling behind the US and China. This is what prompted the report from Draghi, as well as other analyses.

As part of this elevation, the Commission intends to create a European Competitiveness Fund, “to ensure that we invest in the innovation and technologies that will shape our economy and drive our transitions”. Development of the ECF has been assigned to Stéphane Séjourné, the designated Commission executive vice-president for prosperity and industrial strategy.

Deketelaere suggested to RPN that the Framework Programme could “come to an end” and instead become the ERC, EIC and ECF.

Robert-Jan Smits, the Commission’s former top R&I official and now president of Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, is another of those who has expressed surprise at how the Framework Programme has been addressed in the mission letters. He told RPN he thinks it is “quite likely” that the Framework Programme “will become part of” the ECF.

He warned: “If this would be the case, special care should be taken of the ERC since, with its focus entirely on excellence and originality, this impressive investigator-driven programme with an amazing track record would not fit into such an overall competitiveness programme, which will be solely aimed on short-term impact through close-to-market and innovation-related activities.”

The influential MEP Christian Ehler has also expressed concern. In a press release commenting on the commissioner allocations, he said the ECF “reads a lot like the administrative take-over of Union funds that was rumoured to be the wish of some Commission officials. This would…undermine important Union programmes like…the Framework Programme for research.

“We need European research funding to be taken out of the hands of bureaucrats and into the hands of experts. Integrating R&I in the ECF would do the opposite and this cannot be accepted by the Parliament.”

RPN asked the Commission for comment on the concerns when they were first expressed following the publication of the mission letters, and in response it merely quoted the part of the Zaharieva letter that refers to Horizon Europe.

RPN has asked the Commission for comment again in light of the latest fears and rumours.