Europe launches newest R&D framework program

Horizon 2020 is split into three broad areas: excellent science (€24.4 billion over seven years), industrial leadership (€17 billion), and societal challenges (€29.7 billion). Another €1.6 billion for the five-year nuclear energy portfolio (Euratom), €2.7 billion for the virtual European Institute of Innovation and Technology, and €3.2 billion toward such things as large research centers, public outreach, and stimulating program participation in underperforming regions fill out the budget.

European funding can pave the way for frontier research that national governments may find too risky, says Bernhard Fabianek of the EC’s research and innovation directorate general. “What the EC funds can become pathfinders, guidance for member states. Often, two or three years later, they publish the same priorities. We spend 5% now, and the other 95% [from national agencies] will follow.”

Since their inception in the 1980s, the framework programs have supported industries such as steel, coal, pharmaceuticals, and electronics. The funding programs are “called ‘research and innovation,’ but tend to be strongly connected with industry,” says Carlo Rizzuto, chair of the European Association of National Research Facilities and president of Elettra, the synchrotron light source in Trieste, Italy. Among the areas tagged for funding under “industrial leadership” in Horizon 2020 are information and communications technologies, space, biotechnology, and advanced materials. And rules have been changed to attract more small and medium-sized enterprises. As Wood puts it, “You don’t want to support tired old industry.”

Horizon 2020 differs from earlier framework programs in calling for proposals to help solve specified societal challenges instead of defining areas of R&D that will be supported. That bottom-up approach is a key part of what makes Horizon 2020 “more holistic,” Wood says. Personalized medicine, food security, energy, and climate are among the societal problems the program addresses.

Research, including basic research, will win funding across Horizon 2020. But the obvious place to look for basic-science funding within the European framework is in the “excellent science” area, which has four subcategories. One is a set of programs named for Marie Skłodowska-Curie that are largely for international and cross-sector exchanges and training. Another, called “future and emerging technologies,” is for visionary research with an eye toward commercial products and applications. Two 10-year, €1 billion programs—on the brain and on graphene and related layered materials—also come largely under this subcategory (see Physics Today, December 2013, page 20).

A third subcategory, “research infrastructures,” is for broadening use of existing nationally funded research facilities; for preparatory and design work on large international facilities, such as the Square Kilometre Array in South Africa, the European X-ray Free Electron Laser near Hamburg, and the Extreme Light Infrastructure, which has facilities in three eastern European countries (see Physics Today, June 2010, page 20); and for making advances in electronic infrastructure. The fourth subcategory is the ERC, which takes center stage for researchers.

In awarding grants to single investigators rather than groups with representatives from several countries, the ERC breaks the mold of European framework funding. Founded in 2007, the ERC has been hugely popular and prestigious (see Physics Today, April 2008, page 30). “From a visibility point of view, it helps that we had Nobel laureates on the books—Andre Geim, Konstantin Novoselov, and Serge Haroche to name but three,” says EC spokesperson Michael Jennings. “That raised the profile. But the ERC also captures people’s imagination.”

The ERC represents “an enlargement of attention to pure research,” says Rizzuto. “It’s a major evolution within the framework program. [The money] is not big compared to the total spending in Europe, but it is definitely making a difference.” Under Horizon 2020, about 8000 senior researchers plus 28 000 junior researchers will be funded by the ERC. Grants can be up to €3.5 million over five years.

As part of the increasingly global competition for the best minds, ERC grants are open to anyone, working in any field. “This opens the possibility of attracting very good researchers, at least part-time, to Europe,” says Rizzuto. So far, about 300 ERC awardees, or 7% of the total, have been from outside Europe, although many of them were already based in the EU. “More efforts are needed to get the ERC’s ‘quality first’ message out, attract more overseas talent, and promote ‘brain circulation,’” says mathematician Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, the council’s new president.

Excitement about the increase in ERC funding notwithstanding, among researchers a certain skepticism prevails regarding Horizon 2020. Organizational changes mean applicants have to learn to navigate the new system. And many have a “wait-and-see” attitude about much-touted simplifications to the administrative aspects of the program. “The EC has slashed red tape, making it easier to apply and quicker to get funding,” says Jennings. More important, though, some scientists worry that the emphasis on innovation is too strong. Michael Zacherle is an officer for EU affairs at the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT) in Germany. He predicts that “the fraction of successful developments funded by European instruments will go down in the long run,” because basic research, “the first and therefore irreplaceable link in the chain of research and innovation, will be weakened.”

The significance of EU funding varies by country, institute, and researcher. “Researchers that work in a rich country need [EU funding] less and say it’s a hassle,” says Rizzuto. “But in several countries, it’s the only way to get competitive funding.” In Spain, it was “impossible to work” without EU funding “because of the country’s priorities,” says biophysicist Ilya Reviakine, who last fall left a research center in San Sebastian. Now a group leader at the Institute for Functional Interfaces at KIT, he says that in Germany “it’s strongly encouraged to be part of EU networks.” Major research centers such as CERN and DESY, for their part, participate in the European framework programs mostly to promote science and networking.

By putting a large chunk of funding into research and innovation, the EU is sending an “important political message about its priorities,” says Žiga Turk, a professor of construction informatics at the University of Ljubljana who has served as science minister for Slovenia and has been involved in EC policymaking. And because the total EU funding is small in “absolute terms, its value is in pulling European resources together and working in synergy with national programs.”

For countries like Slovenia—which, with a population of about 2 million, is one of the EU’s smallest—critical mass in specialized fields is “hard to achieve, and an impartial assessment of quality is difficult,” says Turk. “If you motivate researchers to look for funding on the European scale, you see who succeeds, and it’s possible for national policies to work in synergy with European policies.” The networking, interdisciplinarity, and focus “make a real difference. It’s European added value,” he says.

In Horizon 2020, awards are based on quality, not on politics. Still, the research and innovation portfolio includes mechanisms to help central and Eastern European and other lagging member countries get up to speed. One, for example, involves exchanges between institutes in different countries. As Turk points out, former Soviet republics often have very advanced scientists but lag in industry. A significant part of a separate €366 billion pot of money for funding “cohesion” in the EU will also go toward research and innovation in underperforming regions.