Member Article

The UK has traditionally benefitted from access to huge amounts of EU grant funding for important R&D projects, particularly under the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme which saw around 12 percent of the total funds, amounting to around £7billion awarded to UK researchers over a four year period.

On 1 January 2021, Horizon 2020 was replaced by a successor programme, Horizon Europe, which runs until 2027 and will make a total of €95.5 billion available to fund R&D projects within EU member states.

As a result of Brexit, however, the UK lost its automatic right to participate in Horizon Europe on the basis it is no longer an EU member state. Instead, it was agreed as a condition of the Withdrawal Agreement, that the UK would be able to join Horizon Europe as an associate member, which will offer all the benefits of membership in return for the payment of a hefty fee. However, it is widely recognised that the benefits of joining the Horizon Europe programme are expected to far outweigh the associate member’s fee.

Given the very tight timing of the negotiations around the Withdrawal Agreement, the UK and EU agreed to park negotiation of the exact terms of access to Horizon Europe, including the exact value of the associate member’s fee, until after the effective date of Brexit. This would allow the two sides to concentrate on the more contentious issues in the Withdrawal Agreement – such as the terms of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Since Brexit, and much to the frustration of the UK’s research community, there has been very little movement on the UK’s associate membership to Horizon Europe. Money put aside by the UK for participation in the programme, amounting to £1.6billion, was even returned to the treasury in March last month, causing many researchers to almost lose hope of ever having access to Horizon Europe funds.

It has widely been suggested that the EU has used the UK’s determination to participate in EU programmes as leverage to force settlement of wider political issues, specifically with regards to the differences over the UK’s implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Now that Rishi Sunak has agreed in principle the terms of the Windsor Framework which will address the points of contention in the Northern Ireland Protocol, the EU has made it clear that that the way to participation in Horizon Europe is once again open.

This still leaves the terms of the associate membership and the fee to be determined, but researchers in the UK can now be hopeful that they may, at some point in the near future, be able to access the considerable funding pot which is available under Horizon Europe.

 

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