Europe will ‘fail’ without increased research budget, MEP warns

The European Union will “fail” to overcome the challenges it faces without a €200 billion (£167 billion) budget for its next research framework programme, a leading MEP has warned.

Speaking on a panel organised by the Research Matters campaign, Christian Ehler pointed to targets like Europe’s green transition ambitions, commenting: “The €200 billion is not a given political figure – it is simply that you can mathematically go through the challenges we are facing and the ambitions we have been formulating that we are going to fail without that budget.”

He went on to stress that an increased budget for the successor to the €95.5 billion Horizon Europe programme must not be accompanied by increased restrictions on how it is spent.

“I’m worried that the price for more money will be a more politicised programme,” said Dr Ehler, a rapporteur for the European Parliament on Horizon Europe. Describing the programme’s second pillar, focused on “global challenges and European industrial competitiveness”, as the “weakest instrument of the EU”, while calling the basic research-oriented European Research Council “the most successful instrument”, Dr Ehler said: “We should set some priorities, but we might also have the guts to fail on those priorities.”

He further raised concerns about the declining research and development expenditure of European industry, commenting: “We’re squeezed by both sides: we don’t have the appropriate public spending, but industry in Europe is spending less and less on R&D, and that is worrisome.”

Dr Ehler’s remarks come shortly after the MEP, speaking on behalf of the European Parliament’s committee on industry, research and energy (ITRE), described plans to cut €400 million from the 2025 Horizon Europe budget as “incomprehensible”.

The European Council proposed a total reduction to research and innovation funding in 2025 of €450 million, with the vast majority coming from the Horizon Europe budget. In a letter in response, the parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy stated that “these proposed cuts will not only do serious long-term damage to Europe’s R&I capacity, they also undermine the credibility of the union’s research policy ambitions, may contribute to brain drain of leading European researchers and will slow down the EU in the global race for scientific and technological leadership”.

Calling for the European Parliament to “take the opposite approach and support an increase in European R&I”, the committee pointed to a €2.1 billion cut to the overall Horizon Europe budget agreed earlier this year, with a significant proportion of the funds diverted towards supporting Ukraine. “Even with the originally agreed budget for Horizon Europe, the union is not reaching the level of contribution needed to achieve the 3 per cent expenditure target,” the letter stated.

The League of European Research Universities (Leru) also condemned the latest budget cuts in a statement, noting their seeming incompatibility with the emphasis on research and innovation set out in the recent Draghi report as well as European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s stated goals for the EU.

“To make sure that R&I investment increases as von der Leyen and Draghi propose, a clear R&I investment plan for the immediate future is needed,” secretary-general Kurt Deketelaere said. “This plan should avoid what is happening now again, namely that the council chooses to reduce the Horizon Europe budget because it wants to decrease the EU budget altogether.

“R&I can no longer be the victim of these kind of fights. The role it plays is too important. Leru has been saying this for years, but now finally that message also comes from the highest political level.”

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com