Concerns are mounting that the United Kingdom is in the process of abandoning the European Union’s research program Horizon Europe, the world’s largest integrated research program, after a UK science minister made a speech on June 8 in Brussels saying “time closes” a good decision. His comments come on the day that UK researchers who have already won the Horizon grant receive notice that their grants will be canceled. With approximately $ 100 billion in funding, the EU’s Horizon Europe program provides research grants and funding to EU scientists. provinces and other nations, such as Israel and Norway, prefer to be ‘joint members’. But the continued involvement of the United Kingdom in the process has been questioned since the country voted to leave the EU in 2016.
“Joining Horizon is the best way for science in the UK,” said Sarah Main, executive director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, a London-based science-based advocacy group. Leaving it “would be a very strange move at a time when the Prime Minister is trying to increase the scientific power of the UK,” he said. In December 2020, the EU and the UK signed an agreement as part of a Brexit agreement to continue. collaboration at Horizon Europe. But issues related to the ‘Northern Ireland protocol’ of the agreement have hampered its ratification. The UK government and the EU continue to be at loggerheads over how to use the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which is part of the EU.
Negotiation chip
The UK’s participation in Horizon “serves as a catalyst for a broader and larger political dialogue”, said Kieron Flanagan, a scientific policy researcher at the University of Manchester. “I’m starting to worry about the result.” Last week, UK universities, representing 140 universities, sent a letter to the European Commission warning that “failure to protect the UK organization in Horizon Europe will be a loss of health, wealth and well-being.” Peter Mason, head of international relations at UK universities, said although there was still hope that an agreement could be reached, the situation “looked bleak” due to the Northern Ireland issue.
The UK government has said that if no agreement is reached, it will develop its own £ 15-billion research plan to deal with Horizon Europe. George Freeman, the UK’s science minister, traveled to Brussels on June 8 to explain the country’s situation to the European Commission, although he had not held official talks with the EU. In his address, given by Nature, he called on the European Commission to reach an agreement. “Please don’t use science to play hardball,” he said. “If you have to punish the UK, do it differently.”
He added that the United Kingdom remained “100% committed to European collaborative research programs”, including the Copernicus Earth-observing program, in which UK participation was also uncertain. “I’m not here tonight to tell you we’re leaving,” he said. “But time is running out. We are reaching a critical point. ”
Researchers are not disappointed
A European Commission spokesman told Nature that while the EU continues to “see the combined benefits of scientific cooperation, research and innovation, nuclear research and space”, there are still significant difficulties in implementing the Brexit agreement Freeman highlighted “global cooperation”. ”Offered when the United Kingdom leaves the EU system, including Switzerland, Israel, and Japan. However, Switzerland and Israel are both participants in Horizon Europe, and Japan is in talks to join Horizon with other non-EU nations including South Korea, New Zealand and Canada. “Horizon is where the team is,” said Martin Smith, head of the policy lab at Wellcome Trust, a sponsor of biomedical research in London. “Trying to build something other than that would be very difficult.”
Uncertainty since December 2020 has caused problems for UK researchers. Ben Sheldon, a zoologist at Oxford University, was awarded € 3.1 million in early April from the prestigious European Research Council of Horizon Europe to study the response of animals and plants in the United Kingdom to climate change. He is one of the many UK researchers who have won ERC funding this year. But those grants are given a two-month expiration window, until June 8, on the basis that the United Kingdom formally concludes its merger with Horizon Europe or the grant winners choose to move to the EU.
“If we do not do that then the grant will be canceled,” said Sheldon. He has not yet received a report on the status of his ‘improved aid’, which he says will not be transferred to the EU because it is based in the United Kingdom. “We are in the dark,” he said. “There is a feeling that we shot ourselves in the foot.”
However, more than 140 recipients of the small ERC ‘first benefits’ were told in a letter on June 8 that their benefits would be terminated.A spokesman for the Commission said it was “not legally possible to sign grants and host facilities that are not in the EU member state or in a related country”. Prize winners in the UK will be given until June 29 to make a final decision. “Once the grant preparation process has been completed, we will not be able to repay the grants involved.”
Freeman said the UK government would subsidize successful UK Horizon applicants until December 2022 if no agreement was reached, and outlined plans for another Horizon solution in the UK. Called Program B, it will seek to emulate parts of the EU plan, although details of how it will work are unclear. James Wilsdon, a scientific policy researcher at the University of Sheffield, in the UK, says that while funding for another UK approach may be available, the loss of dignity due to non-integration with Horizon could be difficult to replicate. “Part of the glory of winning ERC funding is to win an international competition grant, instead of eating home-cooked food,” he said.
“Horizon is not just about money,” Smith said. “It could have a significant impact on the UK’s popularity as a research hub.”Freeman suggested that the United Kingdom would consider making another plan if progress was not made with the European Commission in the summer. For many, the prospect of a positive outcome seems far-fetched. “The vision looks very bleak,” Smith said. “Science can be the victim of a broader conflict that has nothing to do with it.”
Source Journal Reference:Jonathan O’Callaghan, UK scientists fear it will be locked out of €100 billion EU research programme, Nature News (2022), doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01637-8
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