Rebuilding collaboration, regulatory divergence and sensitive technologies are the next challenges, says Thomas Jørgensen
After seven years of uncertainty since the 2016 Brexit referendum, the UK will join the EU’s Horizon Europe R&D programme in January 2024. This is very good news.
From the beginning, universities across Europe argued that association to European programmes was the best route to limiting Brexit’s damage to academic cooperation between the UK and the rest of the continent. This was obvious in 2016, and it still holds true. However, both the UK and the EU are now very different places.
The first, and greatest, challenge will be to get research cooperation back to where it was. UK participation in EU R&D programmes stands lower than it was pre-2020, when the country’s researchers had full access to the previous Horizon 2020 programme, but it has by no means disappeared.
Indeed, the UK government has been covering the costs for UK participants who bid successfully for EU funding but have been unable to receive it. This has not solved all the challenges of being outside the programme, but it has kept cooperation going, albeit at a lower level.
However, it remains to be seen to what extent research networks have developed and diverged. Will the next year be a time to call old friends and put together new proposals, or have people moved on?
Given the strength of UK research, many previous connections will naturally re-sprout. Moreover, UK teams coordinated around one in five Horizon 2020 projects, so it’s easy to imagine they will again be pro-active in building and leading consortia. There are good reasons to be optimistic about UK-EU research cooperation picking up in coming years.
Superpower neighbour
The second challenge will be the divergence of the UK from EU regulations and standards. There is a marked trend for EU legislation drawn up for areas other than research to have an immediate impact on research.
Take the bloc’s rules for digital platforms, the Digital Services Act, which affect open-access repositories, or the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which deeply impacts activities across research-performing organisations.
The status of third countries in this type of regulation is important for any cooperation. The UK has a regulatory superpower for a neighbour, and EU rules will continue to matter.
Another example is the EU’s upcoming eIDAS regulation on identification and trust in digital interactions. This proposes rules for software that can link identity to different kinds of credentials, university diplomas, passports and driving licences. It also entails rules for third countries using similar solutions and sets out how their software should comply with EU standards.
If and when the EU model of identity and credentials verification becomes the standard on the continent, it is easy to imagine the complications if the UK chooses a different, non-compliant system. And if at some point the UK’s privacy standards are no longer deemed to comply with the GDPR, this would create hurdles to sharing data. The expected future establishment of European data spaces and data infrastructure could open yet another can of worms.
Sensitive subjects
A third challenge is the European attitude towards developing and sharing strategically important technologies. Horizon Europe has provisions to exclude third countries from specific research projects, where this serves the Union’s strategic interests. This can include associated countries, even if they are seen as part of the inner circle of ‘like-minded countries’.
In recent years, there have been attempts to exclude the UK from Horizon Europe calls in quantum computing and space, although this did not happen in the end. Looking ahead, the priorities of research policy will hold little sway in such decisions. Rather, they will depend on higher-level decisions by Brussels policymakers, who see full control of sensitive technologies as vital to Europe’s economic security and strategic autonomy.
A more protectionist EU might not like to see artificial intelligence made in Europe being dependent on experts in Manchester, or balk at supporting quantum computers housed in Zürich. This will all be clearer when a new Commission takes office in late 2024.
In sum, the UK is inescapably part of Europe, and Europe is dominated by the EU. It will have to find its place here, and this adjustment is going to impact the academic community.
The united research community that saw the Horizon Europe association deal through can congratulate itself, but it still needs to make itself heard in the discussion about the wider framework on pan-European academic cooperation.
Thomas Jørgensen is director for Policy Coordination and Foresight at the European University Association.
A version of this article also appeared in Research Europe