For the first time since Brexit, 50 UK-led research projects have been granted almost €80 million in EU funding through the Horizon programme, prompting celebration not only in the UK's research community but here at European Movement UK as well!
European Movement UK, along with thousands of members and supporters, campaigned to rejoin Horizon, supporting the calls from across academia to not leave UK researchers behind. The benefits of the programme seemed to be blindingly obvious and, in addition to giving much needed support to researchers, rejoining Horizon would also set a precedent for the UK once again interacting cooperatively with EU institutions – a model that could hopefully be repeated with the likes of Erasmus+.
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In 2023, Prof Dame Anne Glover told European Movement UK that “hard Brexit demolished the UK’s status as Horizon Europe’s biggest beneficiary and as arguably the biggest contributor to the Programme’s many scientific and other successes.”
But now, in light of this fantastic news, it seems that the cleaning up of that demolition can now begin in earnest.
Due to ongoing disagreements over the Northern Ireland Protocol, UK projects had been excluded from the programme for 3 years. Even when those disagreements were resolved and the Windsor Framework was agreed between the UK and EU, Horizon still seemed not to be a top priority for the UK government of the day, baffling and angering the scientific community.
Finally, in September 2023, the good news that we had all been waiting for came. The EU commission and UK government announced that an agreement had been reached and the UK would be rejoining Horizon, paying an annual participation fee of €2.4 billion and finally allowing UK scientists and researchers to once again apply for grants.
Horizon Europe constitutes a €96 billion research programme from which the UK, before Brexit, had often been one of the most successful recipients. The European Research Council (ERC) controls €16 billion of that €96 billion fund, and the UK has frequently received the lion’s share of the ERC’s funding, compared to other remember states.
The loss of these grants post-Brexit had a profound and destructive effect on UK-based researchers, with many like Prof Dame Anne Glover warning that talent was moving away to better funded institutions abroad and opportunities for high-level research were dying due to lack of investment.
Scientific research is an inherently international endeavour, with teams across the world cooperating to ensure the highest levels of research practice and peer-review. As such, programmes like Horizon provide an invaluable funding framework in which this kind of international cooperation can take place. The loss of Horizon funding in the UK was not just a loss of money, but it also degraded our research community’s connections with colleagues across Europe.
Thankfully, the UK is finally back in Horizon, and that €80 million in grants represents the gains in only the first round of awards, with more potentially to come. Unsurprisingly, the UK has not re-entered the programme and risen straight to the top of the most-funded countries list, with Germany and the Netherlands both having more projects who have been granted funding.
However, this represents the first step in what will hopefully become the UK’s journey back to being a key player in European science and research, a journey that our country's researchers seem only to happy to embark upon after 3 years out in the academic cold.
And perhaps, with money coming in from the EU and tension thawing under a new Labour government, this €80 million might represent the first step towards event greater cross-channel cooperation through Erasmus+, youth mobility, and fewer visa restrictions for musicians and artists.