If you¡¯re in search of entertainment, watching a recording of a European Parliament press conference concerning research and innovation funding policy might not necessarily be your first port of call. But that¡¯s where you¡¯d be wrong, according to Kurt Deketelaere, secretary-general of the League of European Research Universities (LERU). He recommends watching ¡°with some popcorn and a glass of wine¡±.

Asked about the European Commission¡¯s approach to the successor to its current research funding programme, Horizon Europe, Ehler did not hold back. Castigating a seeming ¡°secret operation within the Commission¡± to fold research and innovation funding into a broader European competitiveness strategy when the next budget period begins in January 2028, he told the audience that he was ¡°speechless¡± at the lack of consultation with the Parliament or Council (consisting of national ministers).

Ehler, who is the rapporteur for the European Parliament¡¯s Committee on , in effect threw down the gauntlet to Commission president and fellow German Christian Democrat Ursula von der Leyen, declaring: ¡°It¡¯s not going to fly.¡±

A sense of concern has been building among higher education and research leaders in the months since von der Leyen was elected for a second term as Commission president, as clear plans for the next framework programme for research and innovation have become ever more conspicuous by their absence.

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¡°The EU is clearly alarmed by how it¡¯s falling behind in key advanced technologies, and it¡¯s worried about the slow pace of industrial transformation in Europe ¨C and I think there are good grounds for being alarmed,¡± said Jan Palmowski, secretary-general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities. ¡°One of the big challenges for the Commission is that it has relatively limited funds available to produce a turnaround. And at the moment, it seems to be making a change [in its approach to research, prioritising] short-term solutions over long-term gains.¡±

As the Commission avoids any definitive statement about the future of its research framework programme ¨C of which the next one would be the tenth, hence its interim ¡°FP10¡± designation ¨C sector leaders have been forced to piece together a picture themselves ¨C and it¡¯s not a picture they like. ¡°Over the past [few] months, the European Commission?president and executive vice-presidents have made it clear ¨C not explicitly, but implicitly, through all the documents that it is producing ¨C that it¡¯s probably not going to go for a self-standing 10th framework programme,¡± said Deketelaere.

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Instead, European Union publications, including January¡¯s Competitiveness Compass, suggest an intent to incorporate research and innovation funding into a new ¡°European Competitiveness Fund¡±, as part of the next overarching six-year EU budget, known as the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and due to run from 2028 to 2034.

¡°The Commission¡¯s leadership team seemingly has this approach that much, or most, or all research and innovation funding would be absorbed into this fund, together with the budgets of many other existing programmes, which could give them an enormous financial bazooka that they could use at liberty to fund all kinds of EU priorities,¡± Deketelaere said.

Reading the Competitiveness Compass, one line in particular alarmed Palmowski: ¡°Future EU research funding will provide targeted support to industrial competitiveness with a more strategic and less bureaucratic approach to supporting the transition from applied research to the scale-up phase.¡±

To him, ¡°that really means that research funding would be devoted to things that are not research at all. They will support projects once the research has been done and take them to market. To my mind, that¡¯s not research funding ¨C that¡¯s industrial strategy.¡±

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While industrial strategy is all very well, sector representatives are united behind Ehler¡¯s insistence that it is no substitute for a stand-alone research framework. Integrating FP10 into a competitiveness fund ¡°could threaten the stability, predictability and core mission of the programme¡±, said Vinciane Gaillard, research and innovation director at the European Universities Association.

¡°Research and innovation require long-term, predictable funding,¡± she stressed ¨C but a competitiveness fund ¡°could prioritise flexibility over stability, making it easier to divert funds to short-term political objectives. This would jeopardise the continuity of research projects, discourage participation and hamper Europe¡¯s ability to attract and retain top research talent.¡±

Speaking to Times Higher Education, sector leaders repeatedly returned to one phrase to sum up their concerns about the competitiveness fund: short-termism. ¡°Both the Council of the EU and the European Parliament stress the importance of maintaining space for curiosity-driven research, yet a focus on short-term priorities could sideline this essential support,¡± Gaillard said.

Europe¡¯s ¡°long-term competitiveness¡± is dependent on scientific excellence, she added ¨C ¡°which cannot be sustained if FP10¡¯s agenda is dictated by immediate economic or political concerns¡±.

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Deketelaere agrees: ¡°We¡­need a stand-alone programme because the risk is that through a competitiveness fund, everything is going to be reduced to what is necessary now: to solve problems now in order to be able to compete with the US, to compete with China,¡± he said. ¡°OK, we can perhaps win a few battles: let¡¯s wait and see. But in the meantime, we¡¯re cutting the bottom out of our R&I policy. I really miss the long-term R&I view.¡±

Silvia G¨®mez Recio, secretary-general of the Young European Research Universities Network (YERUN), also made a similar point. Without a stand-alone framework programme, she said, ¡°there is no predictability for the future of research and innovation. There is no predictability for the future of the talent that is part of the research and innovation community. It will make us poor in the future.¡± She said the situation was summed up by the Spanish expression pan para hoy, y hambre para ma?ana: bread for today, and hunger for tomorrow.

She also worries that a focus on competitiveness could boost some disciplines to the detriment of others, with social sciences, humanities and the arts at particular risk. ¡°These disciplines are essential for addressing societal challenges and informing policy, yet an industrially focused funding model could sideline interdisciplinary research,¡± she said.

Palmowski raises an additional concern: the preservation of scientific standards. ¡°Only a stand-alone programme will really guarantee that scientific standards will be applied to the selection of grants,¡± he said. ¡°Otherwise, you will have a programme in which grants will be awarded based on political priorities and not on research excellence, and that¡¯s really the death of EU-funded collaborative research as we know it.¡±

Another significant concern about a research funding regime excessively focused on European competitiveness is that it will be less relevant to non-EU nations. Horizon Europe, in particular, has recognised the benefits to partnering with strong research systems wherever they are in the world, and as Canada, New Zealand and ¨C as well as European neighbours such as the UK and Switzerland ¨C are partially associated to it. There has also been recent talk in Australia that the country may want to revisit its decision last year not to associate given that the US has begun imposing stringent conditions on the overseas collaborations that it funds.

But John Womersley, a strategic adviser at the University of Edinburgh who has advised the European Commission on research infrastructure, said a focus on industry could seriously dampen non-EU academics¡¯ appetite for association. The huge demand among the UK scientific community to associate to Horizon Europe after leaving the EU, for instance, was driven by their pre-Brexit success in the excellence-driven first pillar of Horizon Europe¡¯s predecessor, known as Horizon 2020.

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¡°To most British academics, that¡¯s what they think of when they think of the Horizon programme,¡± Womersley said. And even if the Commission maintains a stand-alone FP10, he predicts a continued shift ¨C already visible in Horizon Europe ¨C towards ¡°missions and challenges, with the goal of delivering useful results that would position European industry to be more competitive¡±. For non-EU countries that stand to benefit less, association could therefore become less attractive, he said.?

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For its part, the Commission dismisses the sector¡¯s concerns.?Thomas Regnier, its spokesperson for?tech sovereignty, defence, space and research told Times Higher Education that no decision has been taken yet on the ¡°architecture¡± of the next MFF, due to be published in July, and noted that in February, the Commission had launched on it, which will remain open until 7 May.

However, he added that von der Leyen¡¯s document ¨C in effect, her manifesto for her successful bid for a second term as Commission president, published last summer ¨C clearly emphasises that she ¡°sees research and innovation at the heart of the [European] economy¡±, and the increase in research spending that she proposed is ¡°a clear sign of a strong position on R&I policy in the coming years¡±.

¡°The Commission¡±, he added, ¡°is committed to advocating for an ambitious and increased budget on research and innovation, focusing on better prioritisation and simplification.¡±

Palmowski conceded that the Commission¡¯s reticence concerning FP10 could be seen merely as a reflection of the political turbulence across the continent and beyond. ¡°The EU is dealing with a lot of things that are changing very rapidly, and it¡¯s quite possible that as a result of those developments, the EU¡¯s perspectives are changing,¡± he said.

But a more cynical interpretation would be that the Commission is deliberately seeking to circumvent the inevitable protests that would be sparked by a decision to end stand-alone framework programmes. ¡°It¡¯s very difficult to oppose when you don¡¯t know what you¡¯re dealing with,¡± Palmowski said.

For YERUN¡¯s G¨®mez Recio, ¡°the main issue¡± is that without a clear statement of intent from the Commission, university and research organisations are devoting time and resources to make recommendations for a framework programme that may not exist. ¡°There seem to be two parallel realities,¡± she said.

Those diverging realities are visible, too, among the institutions of the EU ¨C hence MEP Ehler¡¯s extraordinary public statements. His press conference came as the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for ¡°FP10 to be a stand-alone EU programme¡± with a ¡°substantially higher budget¡± than Horizon Europe. Last October, for instance, the Commission¡¯s expert group responsible for evaluating Horizon Europe, chaired by Manuel Heitor, the former Portuguese science minister, a more than doubling of the EU budget for research to €220 billion.?

This position was echoed on the same day by the council of national science ministers in their : ¡°We¡­call on the European Commission to draft its initial proposal for the future framework programme building on the legacy of self-standing framework programmes,¡± the declaration read, further stressing the need for ¡°an adequate budget¡­matching its strategic role¡±.

In Deketelaere¡¯s experience, ¡°It is unusual to have the Commission on one side and the Parliament and the Council on the other, saying quite different things. The Commission¡¯s role is to propose things, but it¡¯s going ahead at 300 miles an hour, presenting all kinds of things as being decided and not consulting with everybody. If they continue this, it¡¯s going to lead to a clash of the EU institutions.¡±

While the stance of the research ministers is heartening, Deketelaere noted, their sway is ultimately limited: ¡°At the end of the day, everything depends on the MFF, and the MFF is shaped by prime ministers and ministers of finance.¡±

The end goal of FP10 was never simply to replicate Horizon Europe, sector leaders insist. ¡°We don¡¯t just want to copy and paste,¡± said Deketelaere. ¡°We are not asking for the status quo. We want to see evolution in the framework programme. We know that the present programme isn¡¯t perfect.¡± Among the potential improvements he advocates are a reduction of red tape for researchers and fewer?topics and?budget lines in the second ¡°global challenges¡± pillar of the programme to avoid ¡°dilution¡± of already limited funding.

G¨®mez Recio would like to see greater flexibility. At present, ¡°Once you get a grant agreement and you have told the Commission that you are going to deliver on something, it is extremely difficult to change the course of action, even if it¡¯s ultimately going to lead to a better outcome,¡± she said. She also echoes the calls for a bigger budget, citing the current excess of high-quality but unfunded proposals. ¡°There is clearly potential to deliver more,¡± she said.

Sector leaders haven¡¯t given up hope of a stand-alone FP10: with both the Parliament and the Council in their corner, Deketelaere feels ¡°optimistic that we will pull it off¡±. Palmowski, similarly, is ¡°concerned but also optimistic¡±, insisting that ¡°a compromise is still possible.¡±

¡°I also think it¡¯s possible to have a self-standing framework programme that¡¯s closely aligned with a competitiveness fund, as long as it¡¯s an excellence-based programme with rules of participation that make things simpler and more inclusive for researchers,¡± Palmowski said.

¡°The reason why I still think that¡¯s possible is because I don¡¯t see any alternative in terms of where Europe is right now.¡±

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