Universities
UK (UUK) has given its support to the agreement reached between EU institutions
on the future shape of the Horizon Europe programme. UUK is confident that
Horizon Europe, the successor to Horizon 2020, will champion ground-breaking
projects and research.
In
a statement agreed today (12 April 2019), UUK’s board is urging government
to act now to confirm the UK’s association to Horizon Europe, whether we leave
the EU or not.
Statement
from the UUK Board:
The
UUK Board welcomes the agreement reached between the EU institutions on 20
March on the main features of the Horizon Europe programme, which will succeed
the Horizon 2020 programme and is due to run between 2021-27.
The
EU Framework Programmes have proven very effective at facilitating and
stimulating high quality pan-European research and innovation collaboration.
Thanks to this agreement, we are confident that Horizon Europe will continue to
foster productive collaborations by identifying excellent research ideas
through a combination of mission-driven calls and researcher-led 'blue sky'
competitions.
Subject
to future agreement on the provisions for third country participation and the
budget, this text preserves the key principles for the next Framework Programme
championed by UUK. Most importantly, we are pleased to see that Horizon Europe
will remain steadfastly committed to funding excellence wherever it is found,
and that it aims to be even more open to the world, including by continuing to
draw on non-EU expertise in evaluation and permitting the exploitation of
results across the world.
We
now call on the UK government to work with the European Commission to ensure
that UK association to this programme is agreed at the earliest possible date,
irrespective of the final outcome of Brexit. This is not only in the interest
of UK universities and our European partners, but also of all European citizens
who benefit from the fruits of these collaborations.
