One of the other FYI team members is working on an article about Horizon 2020, and my assignment yesterday was doing research for her. I found the topic really interesting, and in an effort to help organize all the information I decided the best approach was by writing a blog post.
What is Horizon 2020? You might have heard it mentioned recently throughout the media. Horizon 2020 is the latest program of the Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development. The Framework Programmes are funding programs created by the European Union (EU) and the European Commission (EC) to support and foster research in the European Research Area, a system of scientific research programs consolidating the scientific resources of the EU.
Lately, discussion of Horizon 2020 has been cropping up frequently in the news. Debates range from how Brexit will affect the United Kingdom’s involvement with Horizon 2020, to if the European Research Council has “too often played it safe” with the programs they’ve chosen to fund, to if the flat-rate model of doling out awards disadvantages institutes that can’t afford to pay the overheads required to use large research facilities such as synchrotrons.
This post is meant to give you background on the history of Framework Programmes in the EU, information on what exactly is the EC, and the challenges driving Horizon 2020.
Framework Programmes
Before jumping into the details of the Framework Programmes, I want to make a brief note on the European Union. The EU was formally established on November 1, 1993 with the aim of ending the frequent and bloody wars between neighbors, which culminated in World War II. There are 28 member countries in the EU, soon to be 27 once the United Kingdom formally leaves in March 2019. Though the EU was not formally established until 1993, it already existed in some form prior to that point based on previous treaties signed between various European nations.
The European Commission is an institution of the EU, responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding EU treaties, and managing EU day-to-day business. In 1984, the European Council (which would later become one of the main EU institutions) created the first of the Framework Programmes. Nowadays, the Framework Programmes are overseen by the European Commission. The first six programs covered five-year periods, but from Framework Programme 7 (FP7) onward, the programs run for seven years. Horizon 2020 is the second program to run on this seven-year schedule.
In FP6 and FP7, the focus was on funding technological research. However, Horizon 2020 shifted its focus to innovation, with its objective being to complete the European Research Area (ERA). Since its inception in 2000, ERA’s purpose has been to increase the competitiveness of European research institutions by bringing them together and encouraging a more inclusive way of work, similar to what already exists among institutions in North America and Japan. (Image – Euro Dollar Currency) |
Challenges and Successes of Horizon 2020
A new report released on June 27, 2017 by Science|Business Network provides a great overview of Horizon 2020 goals and challenges experienced in the implementation. My information in this section is drawn from that report.
In the report Science, Research and Innovation Performance of the EU, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation Carlos Moedas says Europe faces “three major challenges”:
- A need to improve the translation of research into marketable innovations
- Europe sometimes lags global rivals in the quality of science despite having a world-leading quantity of scientific output
- Europe doesn’t foster enough international science cooperation and science diplomacy
- One, the EU’s specialty lies in medium-high tech sectors such as automobiles and machine tools, rather than high-tech industries like information and computer technology (ICT). Lately it’s been seen that the EU is losing ground economically to Asian countries like South Korea and China who do specialize in ICT.
- Two, the increasing complexity and pace of innovation makes it difficult for all but a few companies to compete in the market if the government doesn’t back ventures.
- Three, without government backing, private investors want to focus their funding on technologies they know will bring quick economic gain rather than basic research, which can take up to 20 years to generate a positive rate of return.
In order to address these challenges, the EU and EC decided to make innovation the focus of Horizon 2020.
While Horizon 2020 is the EU’s largest research and innovation (R&I) program, previous R&I programs in the EU resulted in great returns, like:
Copernicus
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The most ambitious earth observation project to date, with 30 satellites circling the Earth in a joint effort between the EU and the European Space agency. Tracks crops, monitors air pollution and climate, watches ocean currents and ice floes to aid shipping. All this data provided free, to anyone around the world.
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Mobile phones
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(Image – Science|Business)
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Despite these setbacks, the next seven-year budget plan the EU is developing, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), also focuses on R&I, just like Horizon 2020.
This year a new study came out that received 3,483 responses from individuals, representatives of “umbrella” organizations, and representatives of single entities on how they feel Horizon 2020 is doing so far. 76 percent of the respondents received support from different parts of the Horizon 2020 program, and the main reasons for the 24 percent who did not receive support were a) success rates too low to be worth applying and b) limited financial/human resources to prepare proposal. Findings from this new report showed:
- 37 percent of consultation respondents felt Horizon 2020 is stimulating disruptive and market-creating innovation only to some extent.
- 94 percent of the public consultation respondents agreed, to some extent or more, that Horizon 2020 helps to foster excellent science.
- While 57 percent of respondents found the balance between small and large projects in calls for proposal “good” or “very good,” 24 percent found them “poor” or “very poor.”
- 78 percent of respondents stated they were very satisfied or satisfied with Horizon 2020.
You might wonder how any of this applies to America. If you noticed in the Challenges and Successes section, cooperation does occur with non-EU countries, including the U.S. This question of American involvement is actually quite common, and the EC put together a list of frequently asked questions about how this cooperation with the U.S. works. One question I found interesting was, “Can a U.S. entity become a research partner after a H2020 project has started?” The answer is “yes”: