What’s going on in the EU: 25 February to 10 March

This week: Covid recovery, open access, animal research and more

Covid recovery

The €723.8 billion fund set up by the EU to help its member states recover from the Covid-19 pandemic can have “a real transformative impact” on the development of several of those countries’ research and innovation systems, according to a European Commission report. Several eastern and southern European member states have a high allocation from the fund and low prior spending on research and innovation as a share of their GDP, meaning that their investments from the fund “amount to over one year of (pre-Covid) public investments in research and innovation”, the report on the fund’s first year said.