Researchers and diplomats have hailed the benefits of increased collaboration, one year after the UK rejoined the EU’s major research funding programmes.
1 January marked a full year since the UK formally associated to the EU’s flagship research funding programme Horizon Europe and its Earth observation programme Copernicus.
Horizon Europe is the world’s largest funding programme for scientific research, with a €95.5 billion (£81 billion) budget over seven years from 2021 to 2027. While the UK had participated in the predecessor programme Horizon 2020, its involvement in Horizon Europe was delayed for several years due to the political fallout from Brexit. A long researcher-led campaign eventually saw the UK government and European Commission reach an agreement over UK participation in September 2023, with the UK formally joining the European programmes on 1 January 2024.
The University of Sussex’s Wendy Brown, who chairs the Heads of Chemistry UK group that represents the leaders of UK university chemistry departments, applauds the deeper international partnerships that Horizon membership enables. ‘It’s the opportunity for formal collaborations with our European friends and collaborators,’ she says. ‘Because there’s almost no UK funding systems where you could work with someone in a European country and both of you can get funding.’
‘So UKRI, or anything like that, would allow us to put European collaborators onto a grant as a project partner, but they couldn’t get any money, for example,’ adds Brown. ‘So it’s a proper opportunity to work with European collaborators, which we were used to having before Horizon [association] disappeared.’
Brown also highlights the additional career benefits that winning Horizon funding brings to researchers. ‘We had the situation when we didn’t have funding from Horizon Europe, where … the government said: “Oh well, this is fine, because we’ll still give you the money”,’ she notes. ‘But that’s not the same at all, because it’s actually very prestigious to have EU funding and it’s a good sign of esteem within the community. And so UK researchers heading up these [projects] is really important.’
Earlier this month, the EU’s delegation to the UK released a statement noting that UK participation in Horizon Europe ‘is on a good track’. Many funding calls are still open, meaning it is still too early to fully assess exactly how successful the country’s researchers have been with their applications. However, the EU delegation notes that ‘initial data shows a positive trend for UK-based researchers and organisations’.
In July, the UK was shown to be the top beneficiary of the most recent round of European Research Council (ERC) proof of concept grants, with the country’s researchers winning 15% of the total grants awarded. Recent figures have also shown that UK-based researchers were also among the most successful in winning the ERC’s consolidator grants and its starting grants, which offer early-career researchers €1.5 million over five years to launch their own projects. Figures released in September showed that the UK had submitted the highest number of proposals from any country for Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions postdoctoral fellowships in 2024.
While the return to Horizon appears to be paying off, Brown notes that there are still some lingering effects of Brexit that complicate international collaboration. In particular, she points out that if PhD students are brought onto Horizon-funded projects, they will pay domestic tuition fees at European institutions, but would have to contend with much higher international fees if they were to carry out their research in the UK.
‘So we’ve still got the immigration issues caused by Brexit that cause some trouble for PhD students, in particular, because they are treated as overseas here,’ she says. ‘Whereas before we left the EU, they were treated on the same level as UK PhD students – so that adds complications.’
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