On Monday, 11 March, the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union sent Member State delegations a second set of draft conclusions on the ex-post evaluation of the European framework programme for research for the 2014–2020 period, Horizon 2020, and on the future outlook for these framework programmes.
This evaluation, which was positive overall, had been published by the European Commission on 29 January (see EUROPE 13338/6). In the wake of this report, the Belgian Presidency had, for a start, submitted an initial draft on 16 February (see EUROPE 13354/8). This new text will be examined in a working party meeting on Monday, 18 March.
In its new draft conclusions, the [Belgian] Presidency proposes that delegations agree on the need for a sufficient quantity of quality data that is recent in order to assess the long-term effects of European research and innovation framework programmes while taking into account the need to minimise the administrative burden on participants.
In addition, the new draft conclusions propose insisting on the need for a robust ‘evidence base’ for framework programme evaluation exercises.
With regard to funding and the budgetary aspects of the framework programmes, the Belgian Presidency—in addition to calling for a stable budget for framework programmes—wants to reaffirm, as the European Commission has done (see EUROPE 13338/6), that an additional amount of €159 billion would have been needed to fund all the high-quality proposals submitted in the context of Horizon 2020.
Moreover, the [Belgian] Presidency also wanted to point out that Horizon 2020 had not achieved its budgetary target for climate-related topics.
Other changes concern, for instance, the value of a ‘bottom-up’ approach to thematic priorities, a call for the European Commission to strengthen the integration of a social sciences and humanities dimension into research, and even an emphasis on the positive structuring effect of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) [programme] for host organisations.
Link to the draft conclusions: https://aeur.eu/f/b9f (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)