Industry News
Why UK participation in Horizon Europe matters to you Jacqueline Balian, GAMBICA,
jacqueline.balian@
gambica.org.uk
IN THE run up to the election of a new Conservative party leader and Prime Minister, GAMBICA wrote to all eight initial candidates asking them about their views on Horizon Europe. You might not be surprised to hear that none of them replied. Perhaps they regard the future of the UK’s research capability as too risky to have an opinion on, but UK scientists, business leaders and GAMBICA members see it as a key competitiveness issue and GAMBICA is determined to raise it up the government’s agenda.
Horizon Europe is the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation with a budget of €95.5 billion. Before we left the EU, the UK generally won more in funding from Horizon Europe than it contributed. Under a plan drawn up as part of EU withdrawal, the UK would have paid £15 billion as an associate member into the Horizon Europe scheme over seven years and UK scientists could still bid for Horizon funding. Grants were awarded on this basis, but contracts could not be signed until the UK was formally awarded associate status. Associate status for the UK has since been withheld because of the dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol. The European Research Council announced in June that: “The 115 ERC grants offered to UK based researchers will be terminated”. It has since emerged that at least 19 UK based scientists of the 115 who will lose their Horizon Europe grants are preparing to leave the UK.
As GAMBICA members have pointed out, failure to come to a positive conclusion on the Northern Ireland protocol means that the UK risks our scientists moving abroad to fi nd grants and collaboration opportunities with the result that:
• far fewer world leading academics will remain in the UK to teach and inspire coming generations
• opportunities for UK collaborations with leading innovators from the rest of Europe will reduce
• there will be fewer academic spin-offs developing commercial products from university research
• there will be a declining UK market for research equipment, laboratory space, education and scientists, and
• exports will decline as technological innovation elsewhere leaves our UK products behind
The government has now announced a new package of transitional measures should the UK be unable to associate to Horizon Europe. It will allocate funding to new R&D programmes in the UK including a UK Guarantee scheme for projects already in operation run by UKRI and uplifts to existing UK talent schemes. It is also aiming to continue Third Country Participation in Horizon Europe. The bids for UK Guarantee support are being managed by Innovate UK and close on 31 December. To bid, visit
https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/apply-for-horizon-europe-guarantee-funding/.
Sir Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society, feels that this doesn’t match what we are losing however, commenting: “While the UK government’s underwrite will support scientists to continue their research, the best outcome for both UK and European science is full association to Horizon Europe. The priority must be resolving this political impasse so that the valuable collaborations and relationships that have been built up over decades are not lost.”
Horizon Europe grant recipient Giovanni Rosotti, of the University of Leicester, is one of those planning a move out of the UK. [While] “It’s not the only factor… losing access to ERC funds was a big reason behind my decision to move back to Europe,” he said. “I decided to move because the ERC is not simply a large amount of funding, it’s also very well-known and therefore it attracts the best talent from all over the world when hiring students and post-docs, which I’ll need to do in the coming months. There’s no guarantee that the alternative replacement scheme from the UK government will do the same. Also, without access to the ERC, the
Sir Adrian Smith
Giovanni Rosotti
funding for science in UK will massively decrease, and so betting long-term on the UK didn’t sound a wise choice to me.”
GAMBICA has urged the UK government to fi nd a solution with the European Union to allow the UK research community to continue participation in the Horizon Europe programme saying:
“If the UK is excluded from funding for important collaborative research projects, then it will be a severe disadvantage not only to the UK’s research capabilities, but to wider society and business that rely on innovation to improve many aspects of our daily lives. Once lost or diminished, it will be diffi cult to recover the talent, expertise and resources in the UK research community.
“Alternative UK replacements for the Horizon Europe funding would be by far a second-best option. Funding is only part of the issue, but a very important aspect is to be part of a multi-country collaborative research programme to get the best outcome and value.”
Magdalena Skipper, Editor in Chief of scientifi c journal, Nature, agrees, saying: “When Nature was fi rst published back in 1869, single-author scientifi c publications were the norm. They are not only an exception but a true rarity today. Science has become a ‘team’ activity.
“As our knowledge expands, science is becoming more and more collaborative. Practitioners of increasingly distant disciplines come together, recognising the complexity of some of the most important problems that face us; science lies at the heart of the solutions. The COVID-19 pandemic offers a perfect illustration of a complex crisis that has brought together molecular biologists, epidemiologists, clinicians, social scientists, engineers, material scientists and many others.”
Magdalena Skipper
Recent examples of multi-stakeholder collaborations providing opportunities
LABMATE UK & IRELAND - SEPTEMBER 2022
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