Switzerland will continue to participate in the Eurostars-2 and the Active and Assisted Living programmes after its government gave its approval.
The country’s membership of the programmes was secured by the federal council on 23 August. Both programmes aim to support innovation through industry-academia collaboration. Eurostars-2 received €290 million in public funding between 2010 and 2016, while the assisted living programme has an estimated budget of €700m.
In 2014, Switzerland was downgraded from an associate member of Horizon 2020 to partial association, after its citizens voted against “mass immigration” in a referendum in February that year. As a result, the Swiss federal council was unable to ratify a treaty granting free movement to citizens of Croatia, violating Swiss-EU bilateral agreements.
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