European Commission group suggests ways to maximize the impact of EU research and innovation programs

The European Union is engaged in a debate about changing its systems for R&D funding, the first potentially significant changes since its current framework program began in 1984. A group of 15 individuals from research and industry selected by the European Commission last year has submitted a report, Align, act, accelerate, which gives recommendations for overhauling the system. These recommendations are aimed at the remaining three years of Funding Program 9 (FP9)—Horizon Europe (2025-2027) and preparing for the next European Research and Innovation Framework Programme, FP 10 (2028-2034).

The report notes that changes are in order now, especially considering the decline in Europe’s global importance in research, innovation, and technology. The report acknowledges various weaknesses of research, development, and innovation (RD&I) in the current EU system, including:

• The EU stands third behind China and the U.S. as measured by the top 1% of most-cited publications worldwide and, over the past two decades, the EU's contribution to global scientific publications has dropped from 25.5% in 2000 to 18.1% in 2022;
• From 2005 until 2015, the EU was leading the world in scientific AI publications (37%), followed by China (34%) and the US (29%), but by 2021, China had surpassed both the EU (30%) and the US (28%), accounting for 42% of publications; and,
• The EU’s share in total patent applications, which was around 30% of the world's patent applications in 2000, declined to 17.3% in 2021.

The report recommends creating a whole-of-government approach and boosting Europe's competitiveness by putting research, innovation, science, and technology at the center of Europe's economy. It addresses Europe’s competitiveness, saying the program should stimulate public and private investment in research, development & innovation (RD&I) throughout Europe on regional and national levels.

The report proposes that the EU provide “increased, better focused and ring-fenced funding across the full spectrum of RD&I.” It places a price tag on this, saying the budget for the next Framework Programme should increase to 220 billion Euro from the current 93 billion. It also proposes funding more programs with a combination of the EU Framework Program, Structural, and Member State Funds. Another proposal in the report is to establish an experimental unit that could provide funding more rapidly for new programs. They suggest innovation prizes, ARPA-type programs, AI tools, and innovative methods for speeding up the tempo of identifying and reviewing proposals.

The report recommends strengthening competitive excellence by expanding the budget of the European Research Council (ERC), European Innovation Council (EIC), and Marie-Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) program. (The ERC enables universities to recruit, support, and retain top talent with excellent bottom-up ideas; the EIC addresses scaling challenges and critical technologies; the MSCA program combines research with high-level individual training in academia or in an inter-sectorial way via doctorates with industry.) The recommendations also include streamlining and boosting the EIC Fund by attracting substantial private investment and introducing disruptive innovation programs with the capacity to attract more private co-investment of disruptive ideas and firms into the EIC. And the report proposes creating an Industrial Competitiveness and Technology Council to stimulate industrial RD&I investment.

Additional recommendations were aimed to foster an RD&I ecosystem by securing long-term investment in world-class research and technology infrastructures, strengthening university alliances, and requiring Member States to make ambitious national plans and investments in RD&I.

Two final recommendations focus on speeding up processes by accepting responsible risk in return for reduced administrative burden and transaction costs and developing an innovation procurement program to stimulate faster scaling-up by industry.

An article in Science | Business refers to the abovementioned recommendations as "a pretty radical wish list." Still, the authors note, "It comes as some officials within the Commission are drawing up plans for even more radical changes, including bundling all R&I funds into an overarching competitiveness fund, as part of the next long-term budget to run from  2028 to 2034.”