Image: European Parliament [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr
Concern that changes to EU’s 2021-27 budget could involve cuts
The European Commission must prioritise research when it changes its proposal for the EU’s 2021-27 budget to provide support for the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, academic leaders have said.
“Research and innovation should be an absolute top priority, as the past few weeks have proven,” the secretary-general of the League of European Research Universities, Kurt Deketelaere, said on Twitter on 31 March.
Commission president Ursula von der Leyen (pictured) announced on 28 March that the Commission will rewrite its budget proposal to “address the fallout of the coronavirus crisis”. The changes will include “a stimulus package that will ensure that cohesion within the union is maintained through solidarity and responsibility,” she said.
About 20 per cent of EU cohesion funding is used to support research and innovation. In member states that win little competitive funding from the EU R&D programme, cohesion funding is the largest source of R&D support from the bloc.
Jan Palmowski, the secretary-general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities, warned in an opinion piece published in Times Higher Education that the changes “might have the effect of endangering the budget currently proposed for the EU’s research framework programme, Horizon Europe”.
“Soon politicians will look for any excuse to cut public expenditure. After the 2008 financial crisis, expenditure on research and innovation in Europe contracted,” Palmowski warned. He reiterated universities’ call for Horizon Europe to have a budget of €120 billion in 2018 prices, rather than the €83.5bn originally proposed by the Commission.
“It is for the politicians demanding that science deal with the coronavirus to tell us why that is too much to invest in saving lives and making our societies and economies prosper,” he said.
Leaders of EU member states in the European Council have yet to agree their stance on the 2021-27 budget, having failed to resolve their differences at a meeting in February. An EU official said Council president Charles Michel is “consulting the member states to assess when is an appropriate moment to hold another in depth discussion on the matter”.
Thomas Estermann, director for governance, funding and public policy development at the European University Association, told Research Professional News that Covid-19 could have a bearing both on the overall size of the EU budget and how different EU priorities are funded.
“I don’t think [the pandemic is] going to make the discussions any easier,” Estermann said, adding that member states whose economies have been wiped out by lockdowns on civil society are likely to be looking for savings at both EU and national levels.