Eleven research projects were selected on Thursday 22 July to benefit from the funds that the European Commission had announced that they would release under ‘Horizon Europe’ in the framework of the HERA Incubator (see EUROPE 12660/1), for “supporting and enabling urgent research into the coronavirus and its variants”.
312 research teams from 40 countries will work on the projects, which are due to receive a total of €120 million in EU funding, which is slightly less than the €123 million originally announced (see EUROPE 12693/4).
When asked by EUROPE about the lower amount, a Commission official explained that the twelfth project proposal envisaged, which was “currently on the reserve list”, would require “ an amount which would go beyond the funds foreseen”.
Funding for the 11 projects that have already been selected is still subject to the grant agreements being signed and a final decision being taken by the Commission. However, the European institution has given assurances that the teams can already start their work.
The work will include support for clinical trials of new treatments (see EUROPE 12752/16) and vaccines (see EUROPE 12766/18) against Covid-19.
Other projects will strengthen access to research infrastructures “to share data, expertise, and research resources among researchers, to enable research addressing coronavirus and its variants”, explained the European Commission.
To view the selected projects: https://bit.ly/3xXuc3F (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)