Europe’s flagship research programme is getting a nearly €500 million boost, which will bring its total budget to €14.8 billion (£12.7 billion) in its final two years, the European Commission has said.
The Commission said the additional funding will support two new calls in the current seven-year Horizon Europe framework, with one focusing on biodiversity and the other on "advanced technologies with strong commercial potential".
The first, called "Transformative Change Towards a Nature-Positive Economy and Society", has been allocated €237 million and will fund 11 actions aimed at helping the bloc meet its 10 per cent biodiversity spending target. This includes research on ecosystem restoration, biodiversity monitoring and the links between environmental change and human health.
The second, "Bridging Actions 2027", which has a budget of €260 million, "will prepare the ground for the [European Union's] next research and innovation programme and it’s link with the future European Competitiveness Fund", referring to the next Horizon Europe programme, which will run from 2028 to 2034. It will fund 16 actions and is aimed at turning research results into commercially viable technologies and bringing innovations closer to market.
"With this amendment, we are putting new funding behind priorities that matter to Europeans and to attract and boost excellence to and within Europe," said Ekaterina Zaharieva, European commissioner for startups, research and innovation, in a statement.
"And we know that this investment delivers: it is helping more than 151,000 young researchers build their careers and 20,000 companies turn ideas into solutions, products and jobs,"
The current Horizon Europe programme runs from 2021 to 2027 and has a budget of €95.5 billion. During negoitations in 2018, sector leaders had called for €120 billion to be allocated to the framework.
The Commission has proposed a much larger €175 billion budget for the next programme, which will be closely linked to the proposed ECF, a move that researchers have long feared could shift the focus of research from open discovery to industrial and defence priorities.
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