€4 Billion extra for Horizon Europe

On 10th of November 2020, after an intense day and a half of negotiations in Brussels, the European Parliament and EU governments issued a statement about the increase of the EU’s research budget for 2021-2027 by €4 billion.

Additional €15 billion for EU Programmes

Of the reclaimed €15 billion across multiple EU programmes, €12.5 billion is new funding, principally from competition fines imposed by Brussels. According to the EU Council, the rest comes from reallocated funds which represent the 27 EU governments.

EU4Health will benefit from €3.4 billion plus, the student exchange programme Erasmus+ went up by €2.2 billion, and the InvestEU programme got an additional €1 billion.

If the Parliament and the Member States accept the deal, a budget of €1.8 trillion and the COVID-19 recovery package will be implemented.

In July 2020, EU leaders settled on €80.9 billion (at 2018 prices) for Horizon Europe, which is significantly less than €94.4 billion proposed by the European Commission. Since then, parliamentarians have been fighting to reverse cuts made to science and other investment programmes.

Next challenge

The next challenge will be to agree on how the extra funds will be adequately divided within Horizon Europe, with representatives attached to public-private partnerships, the European Research Council, the new research missions, and the European Innovation Council all advocating for more funds.

This article had been elaborated based on the source of Science Business.