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The quest to revive Britain’s leading position in the EU’s €95.5bn Horizon science programme after three years away will face its first big test in January with a deadline to “pump-prime” new applications.
Leading UK scientific organisations have called for proposals by January 17 as part of a government effort to surpass the pre-Brexit landmark of British researchers heading a quarter of the Horizon projects in which the nation was involved.
The UK’s return to the EU network on January 1 as an “associate country” has been welcomed by research and industry groups, which warned that Britain’s absence was undermining its international scientific standing.
But after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the Treasury questioned the €2.5bn-a-year scheme’s value for money, academia and industry are now under pressure to win grants and do groundbreaking research in strategic priority areas.
“Given the importance of science and technology to the future of the UK economy, as well as the accelerating use of technology by manufacturers, it was always vital that the UK rejoined the programme,” said Verity Davidge, policy director at Make UK, the manufacturing industry body.
“Now that we are back inside the tent, the government must move rapidly to make up the ground that will undoubtedly have been lost so that we can again be at the forefront of current and future projects within the scheme.”
The push for the UK Horizon renaissance is being spearheaded by the British Academy, which promotes the study of the humanities and social sciences; the Academy of Medical Sciences; the Royal Society; and the Royal Academy of Engineering.
They are offering awards of up to £10,000 to develop proposals for collaborations between UK-based researchers and colleagues in the 27-member EU or other Horizon associate countries.
The target areas span the scientific realm, from health to space and digital to natural resources. The January 17 submission deadline is followed by a second on February 21, although the government hasn’t said how many pump-priming grants will be available in total.
The agreement for the UK to plug back into Horizon was only finalised in September, after being caught in wider political crossfire between London and Brussels after Brexit in 2020. More than a dozen other associated countries from Europe and beyond, including Turkey, Israel and New Zealand, already access the programme.
Under the deal with Brussels, the UK will contribute an average of €2.43bn annually for the remainder of the seven-year Horizon Europe programme, which runs from 2021 to 2027.
The arrangement contains provisions for both sides to claw back money should UK researchers receive significantly more or less than the country’s contributions.
Britain will need to pay additional fees if the grants it receives total more than 8 per cent higher than the operational contributions it has made for any two consecutive years. Conversely, it will be reimbursed if the money it gets out in any given year is more than 16 per cent lower than its operational contributions.
One task for the government will be to coax back UK participants burnt by years of Brexit politicking — and wary because Britain has already missed out on the first three years of Horizon Europe.
Another challenge will be to persuade EU scientists that British researchers will prove reliable partners, despite the country’s acrimonious departure from the European bloc.
“Together with our international partners across Horizon, I am pushing UK businesses and researchers to seize this enormous opportunity, and ensure every part of the UK is getting the very most out of this deal,” said Michelle Donelan, UK science and technology secretary.
“That is why we have made grants available to support UK applicants, set up a campaign blitz which is set to launch shortly, and my officials have a raft of engagement events planned for 2024 to drive participation.”
The impact of Britain’s years outside Horizon is hard to assess from the patchy publicly available data. A guarantee scheme set up by London in lieu of Horizon funding paid out an average of about £740mn annually between 2021 and 2023, compared with the £940mn British researchers received under the EU programme between 2014 and 2020.
The difference may reflect in part decisions by UK scientists to relocate to the EU to access Horizon funding for their work.
The re-establishment of Horizon relationships offers an opportunity to be more strategic than the “pandemonium” of applications seen pre-Brexit, argued Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford university. Ministers and scientific institutions should seek to focus on priority areas of research including artificial intelligence, life sciences, green energy and food security, he said.
“There needs to be a bit of top-down thinking about what areas do we think we can compete in and where a European network would be helpful,” Bell added. “It’s quite a big opportunity, if we can make use of it properly.”
Even optimists acknowledge that restoring the UK’s pre-Brexit position in Horizon will take work. The country’s return represents the first time researchers have been able to be confident about EU co-operation prospects since the Brexit referendum in 2016, said Martin Smith, head of policy at the Wellcome Trust, the charitable foundation.
“There’s seven years of uncertainty to recover from here, so it won’t be overnight,” said Smith. “But with a big effort from government and the scientific community to get the most out of this, I am sure we can climb that hill.”