Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Start-ups, Research and Innovation, presented the ‘Horizon Europe’ 2028-2034 proposal to the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) on Thursday 16 October. MEPs voiced their concerns about governance, administrative simplification and the dual use, civil and military, of the EU’s Research Framework Programme.
Presented in July, the programme has seen its budget double to €175 billion (see EUROPE 13683/7). The Commissioner highlighted three new aspects: the opening up to dual use, the emphasis on competitiveness and simplification thanks to the single regulation.
Christian Ehler (EPP, German) pointed to the lack of clarity regarding the links between ‘Horizon Europe’ and the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF). “The question is how this will work in practice, and that will depend on what the competitiveness coordination tool will look like, the way in which the ECF's comitology functions and the role that the Commission gives to the work programmes”, he stressed.
Similarly, for René Repasi (S&D, German), the programme’s autonomy seems “more on paper than in reality”. He hoped that there would be “no structural overlaps that undermine the autonomy of mandates, selection criteria and, in particular, decision-making procedures”.
“Horizon Europe is an self-standing programme with a separate regulation and a separate budget, which is a ring-fenced budget”, replied the Commissioner. “Programming will be coordinated. [...] There is a difference between the way we organise the calls, independently of the same windows for research and innovation, and then for deployment”.
The same concerns were expressed about dual use, with MEPs fearing that this would complicate the process.
“It is possible to have dedicated dual-use calls, depending on requirements in all parts of the programme. This does not apply to all calls”, explained Ms Zaharieva. “This will be specified in the work programmes. For her, this is an “opportunity” that “will undoubtedly attract talent to Europe”. (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)