On the whole, on Wednesday 2 May, the organisations in the defence of business interests – especially BusinessEurope and UEAPME – welcomed the proposals put forward by the European Commission for the next European budgetary round 2021-2027 (see EUROPE 12013).
They welcomed the future framework programme Horizon Europe intended to support research and innovation. Nonetheless, questions are still unanswered regarding its budget and the role to be played by InvestEU, the future financial instrument, and how it will work with Horizon Europe.
In its budgetary proposals for the period 2021-2027, the Commission suggests the budget of €97 billion should be in current prices, i.e. €86.5 billion in constant 2018 prices, of which around €3.1 billion will be for the InvestEU fund and around €8.8 billion for research in the agri-food sector.
In addition, the Commission maintains the European programme for support to SMEs, COSME, with a budget of €3 billion in current prices (the constant price not being given). This budget, however, would correspond to that foreseen in the current budgetary cycle, a source familiar with the issue states.
“We acknowledge the Commission’s efforts to increase spending on research and innovation activities but would have liked to see even more ambition”, said Director General Markus J. Beyrer, speaking on behalf of BusinessEurope. He thus called on political decision-makers to strengthen the budget dedicated to HorizonEurope.
Ulrike Rabmer-Koller, UEAPME President, welcomed the “positive sign” sent by the Commission while waiting to see how the proposals would “be translated into practice”. She underlined that member states should not lose sight of the role of SMEs concerning innovation and investment when it comes to giving concrete substance to programmes.
She mainly underlined the role of cohesion policy, which must be adjusted to the specific characteristics of SMEs. One and the same approach should be adopted for the new budgetary heading “single market, innovation and digital”, for which €166.3 billion in constant prices is allocated.
As far as Horizon Europe is concerned, the president of UEAPME stressed that the future European framework programme for research should set in place support instruments for highly innovative SMEs and start-ups.
A source from an interest group hailed the decision on the COSME programme, whose decisions will remain in the hands of the growth services of the European Commission and for which implementation should be conducted by InvestEU. Regarding HorizonEurope, the same source noted that the InvestEU fund will also levy around €3.5 billion (current prices) from HorizonEurope. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)