Lord Frost gives update on UK’s participation in Horizon Europe
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Britain signed a Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU in 2020, and as part of that it was agreed that the UK would take part in the bloc’s £80billion flagship innovation programme. But as the UK wants to renegotiate the deal, a furious row over the Northern Ireland Protocol led the EU to ban Britain from joining Horizon Europe until the dispute gets resolved.
18 months later, the back-and-forth rumbles on.
The means researchers promised EU grants via this programme face losing funding as well as other benefits provided by the programme, such as collaborating with European partners.
Because of this, the continued delay has reportedly caused significant uncertainty and “devastation” to the UK’s science community.
Many researchers have even been told to move to an EU country with associated member status to the programme or else face losing their promised grants
Shadow Science Minister Chi Onwurah unleashed fury at the Government, urging negotiators to strike a deal with the EU in order to rescue the prospect of participation.
She told Express.co.uk: “The Government seems to have no idea the devastating impact the uncertainty is having on young and early career researchers who are our science future.
“And we want them to stay here in Britain doing fantastic research.
“They want to do that too, but they don’t know what to do when they do not know where their next grant is coming from.”
And with Brexit negotiator and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss threatening to tear up the Northern Ireland Protocol in recent weeks, there are fears the UK will be permanently excluded from Horizon.
But Science Minister George Freeman headed to Brussels this week in a last-ditch attempt to salvage Britain’s membership.
He tweeted on Wednesday: “En-route to Brussels to meet with EU science leaders today to reiterate that the UK is still committed to associate to Horizon, Copernicus & Euratom, but after 18m time is running out. “
Mr Freeman added: “Given Ukraine, we should put our mutual research interests above politics and stick to science.”
The Science Minister was making reference here to the SticktoScience campaign which is urging the EU to forget about the political dispute and let the UK rejoin the project in the name of science.
In the spirit of the campaign, last week Universities UK, a group representing 140 universities in Britain wrote a letter to European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic urging him to resolve the Protocol row so Britain can access Horizon Europe.
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The letter read: “Failure to secure UK association to Horizon Europe would be a lose-lose for health, wealth and wellbeing and would do a disservice to future generations in Europe and beyond.”
But Mr Freeman said he is “ready” to walk away from Horizon if an agreement cannot be reached in Brussels.
He has also put in place some emergency measures to soften the blow.
Mr Freeman told BBC Radio Four’s World at One: “We put in place a transition programme so that if we do have to go down this road {outside Horizon], we will make sure that those universities in the UK and those researchers who’ve been receiving funds, there won’t be a cliff-edge at all and we will transition through.”
He has also set up a funding mechanism so that “all applications in the UK will be “guaranteed UK funding” for scientists putting in bids to Europe.
Mr Freeman is also hoping that the UK can still get involved with EU programmes as a third-party country, and has suggested that Britain can “do more globally”,
And this is a crucial part of his “£15 billion global research programme” the Science Minister has drafted up as an alternative.
It could involve Britain partnering up with science and innovation powerhouses like our Five Eyes (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the US) partners, as well as countries like Japan, Mr Freeman has previously indicated.
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