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Commission chief confirms plan to strengthen Horizon Europe

Image: Alexandros Michailidis, via Shutterstock

Revised EU budget proposal will also top up cohesion funding, von der Leyen says

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has confirmed rumours that the revised 2021-27 EU budget proposal her team is working on will seek to bolster the bloc’s next R&D programme, Horizon Europe.

Laying out her plan for the EU’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic in a plenary session of the European Parliament on 13 May, von der Leyen said the third of three pillars in the plan would be to “strengthen programmes that have proven their value in the crisis, such as…Horizon Europe”.

The first pillar of the plan will focus on helping member states and will be allocated “the bulk of the money”, including a “top-up” for regional cohesion funding. “This top-up will be allocated based on the severity of the economic and social impacts of the crisis,” von der Leyen said.

Normally, about 30 per cent of cohesion funding is spent on innovation and about 10 to 20 per cent on R&D. During the pandemic, the EU decided that all remaining cohesion funding from the 2020 budget could be spent on Covid-19, rather than on certain activities as is normally required.

The second pillar will aim to stimulate private investment by increasing funding allocated to EU programmes that provide loan guarantees. 

“We already knew before the crisis that we also need major private investment in key sectors and technologies: from 5G to artificial intelligence, from clean hydrogen to offshore renewable energy,” von der Leyen said. “This crisis has only made the need greater than it was before.”

Von der Leyen, who also announced the creation of a dedicated health programme, warned that the EU had “never had an economic shutdown like in the last three months”, adding: “We will not just go back to business as usual soon.”

Once delivered, the Commission’s proposal for the EU budget will be negotiated by member state leaders in the European Council, who were unable to reach an agreement on a first proposal published before Covid-19 emerged. That proposal allocated €83.5 billion in 2018 prices to Horizon Europe—an increase on the roughly €77bn budget of the current programme but far short of the €120bn sought by the Parliament and research organisations.

In the same plenary session, Council president Charles Michel agreed that measures already taken by the EU to aid the recovery from Covid-19 were “not enough”. He said: “It is essential to develop a very strong and ambitious strategy to mobilise more means…We need to take decisions, we also need to adapt our strategy in order to take into consideration the huge consequences of this crisis.”

MEPs’ responses to the plans were mixed. Although many welcomed the general thrust, some said the proposals did not go far enough. Earlier the same day, the Parliament adopted a resolution calling for an EU Covid-19 recovery fund worth €2 trillion. The Parliament also formalised its previous calls for a contingency plan for the EU’s 2020 budget.

“The current situation needs extraordinary solutions,” MEP Jan Olbrycht, who led on the contingency resolution, said in a statement. “We are afraid that the new Multiannual Financial Framework 2021-27 will not be ready on time due to accumulated severe delays.”

A version of this article also appeared in Research Europe