UK Horizon association ‘dither’ risks ‘more lost science funding’

Talks over UK association to Horizon Europe are stuck over Westminster’s push for a correction mechanism to prevent the UK paying in significantly more to the European Union’s research programme than its universities win back, prompting warnings over the danger of further delays.

Agreement over the Northern Ireland protocol – the source of an earlier impasse – had appeared to open the door to final resolution of UK association after Brexit.

But the latest hold-up is over issues related to the UK’s association fee for the programme, for which the government had set aside £1.6 billion in 2022-23 – subsequently returned to the Treasury after being unused.

Further delays in coming weeks risk the impasse persisting until after the summer break, meaning UK researchers would continue to lose out on international collaborations and potentially see more science funding returned unused to government coffers.

The UK government’s fear appears to be that because the nation would be joining part way through Horizon Europe – now in the third of its seven years – British universities and researchers might find it hard to reach full speed in terms of collaborations with continental partners and winning funding.

If the UK were paying an association fee of up to £1.6 billion a year and UK universities did find the initial going tough, that would leave open the potential for the UK to make a significant net contribution to the programme. And if that happened, Horizon association would risk looking unappealing on a value-for-money basis to the UK government in the future.

Under the draft protocol for Horizon association published alongside the EU-UK post-Brexit trade agreement in December 2020, there was a one-way correction mechanism in the EU’s favour, to stop the UK being a net beneficiary from the programme.

The UK is now seeking a correction mechanism in its favour to cap the extent to which it could be a net contributor, but the European Commission is so far refusing to countenance that.

Kurt Deketelaere, secretary general of the League of European Research Universities, said there were “crucial days” ahead.

“The UK government and European Commission are both running out of arguments to oppose what is on the table,” he added.

“The UK government seems to doubt the immediate success of its universities once they are back in; listening to my own members in the UK and EU, I can only say that everyone is eagerly awaiting the green light to go back to business as usual and cooperate again intensively and at high speed in a normal framework programme setting as pre-Brexit.”

Graeme Reid, chair of science and research policy at UCL, who, alongside Sir Adrian Smith, was asked by Whitehall to devise the UK’s domestic “Plan B” to Horizon association now known as Pioneer, said that after seven years of uncertainty over the UK’s relationship with EU research since the Brexit vote and “despite several false dawns, I see no obvious signs of progress towards resolving the issue”.

He continued that there were “two pressures on time”, the first being “corrosive uncertainty over the UK’s relationship with Horizon Europe” which means potential continental research collaborators finding other, non-UK partners.

The second risk, he said, was that “dithering over whether to associate or move to the Pioneer alternative scheme will lead to further funds being surrendered to the Treasury. Earlier this year, £1.6 billion of science funding was sent back to the Treasury. Next February – about eight months away – it could be even more.”

john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com