EU Funding campaign contributions

How to contribute to the campaign

You can join our efforts to obtain an increased budget for Horizon Europe and more favourable conditions for university participation by:

  • Addressing your head of government, minister responsible for higher education/research and minister responsible for finances. EUA has produced material on the added value of EU investment in research and education that you can use for this purpose.
  • Addressing your members of the European Parliament: to reiterate the need for increased funding for the programme and supporting our proposed amendments. This is important for all MEPs - particularly for MEPs of the ITRE Committee.
  • For national rectors’ conferences: Mobilising your members so that the actions above are further reinforced.

 

A selection of actions undertaken by EUA members:

  • Universities Austria warns that the European Commission proposal for the next EU Research Framework Program foresees little growth for basic research, asks from Austrian Education Minister Heinz Fassmann to push for more funding in this area during the Austrian EU Presidency.
  • The Belgian universities, represented by VLIR and CRef, have issued a brochure (in English) that showcases of how Belgian universities use the European R&I budget to create impact. The sector, together with other R&I partners in the country sent a letter to the Prime Minister of Belgium Charles Michel to draw his attention to the importance of placing research, innovation and education at the heart of the new programming period of the European Union.
  • The French, German and Polish Rectors’ Conferences (CPU, HRK and KRASP) have issued a common statement entitled “EU budget: Rectors demand significantly more investment in the knowledge triangle”, available in French, German and Polish versions. The three associations call for a doubled EU budget for research and a three times more funds for the successor of the Erasmus+ programme, highlighting that these are European policies that underpin the economic and political resilience and cultural wealth of Europe.
  • The Lithuanian Rectors’ Conference (LURK) wrote to President Dalia Grybauskaitė and Lithuanian Members of the European Parliament to ask them to promote EU investment in research and innovation and to argue for higher investments in the successor programmes to HORIZON 2020 and ERASMUS+. LURK also issued a declaration on 4 March 2018 calling for sustainable public investment in higher education.
  • The Spanish university conference released “Once razones para aumentar la inversión en Investigación y Desarrollo”.
  • SRK, the Slovak Rectors’ Conference, is coordinating dissemination of the material with its members in Slovakia (See the Slovak version here).
  • Sweden – a few days before the release of the European Commission’s proposal, 12 leading Swedish institutions published a call urging the Swedish government to back a doubling of the EU’s investment in research, education and innovation in the post-2020 period.
  • UNIFI, representing universities in Finland, released a statement “Help us build a sustainable future” focused on the reasons to strengthen EU funding for research. Finnish universities notably support the objective of doubling funds for FP9 and simple and transparent funding rules.
  • Universities UK released its vision for the next EU Research and Innovation Framework Programme, which was also submitted to the European Commission’s stakeholder consultation on ‘EU funds in the area of investment, research & innovation, SMEs and single market'. The position echoes EUA’s proposals for FP9 and marks UUK’s support for the “EU funding for universities” campaign.
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