Members of the European Parliament’s Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) Committee welcomed on Friday 20 March the steps taken by the Commissioner for Innovation and Youth, Mariya Gabriel, to stop the COVID-19 epidemic. However, they call for these measures to be combined “with a long-term commitment to EU research programmes”.
Christian Ehler (EPP, Germany), rapporteur on the Horizon Europe research programme, said that Europeans should take advantage of current investments to anticipate future crises and ensure that they are better equipped in the future.
“When this crisis is over, we must immediately prepare for the next one. This means investing more in research and ensuring that programmes such as Horizon Europe do not become hostages to short-term squabbles between Member States”, he said, adding, however, that “the top priority” remained, for the time being, stopping the spread.
The Commission has implemented a series of initiatives to this end, which it also assures that they should make it possible to be better prepared for possible future epidemics.
17 pre-selected research projects. On 30 January of this year, it launched a call announcing that a total budget of €47.5 million would be allocated to research projects to expedite the response to the epidemic.
17 research projects were shortlisted after expert evaluation. These projects, “involving 136 research teams from across the EU and beyond”, says the Commission, should focus on improving the response to epidemics and on new treatments and vaccines.
Call for research proposals. A public-private partnership between the EU and the pharmaceutical industry, a ‘call for research proposals’, to which the European Commission will contribute €45 million, has also been launched in the framework of the ‘Innovative Medicines Initiative’ (IMI).
“A commitment of a similar magnitude is expected from the pharmaceutical industry”, says the European institution.
This call for proposals, which aims to support projects to develop treatments and diagnostics to deal with the COVID-19 epidemic, will close in one week’s time on 31 March. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)