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EU R&I programmes

The European Union has major plans to enhance its competitiveness. To deliver on this, as well as lasting prosperity and resilience, ambitiously funded, well designed and effectively implemented programmes that put research and innovation at the centre of Europe’s economy are essential.

This page introduces EUA’s work to advocate for an impactful Horizon Europe programme equipped with the level of funding it needs to thrive in a highly competitive global R&I landscape, as well as its relationship with the European Competitiveness Fund.

EUA’s advocacy for an impactful R&I framework programme

The next Horizon Europe programme (2028-2034) can be more than a funding mechanism – it can be a catalyst for excellent, cooperative, inclusive and impactful research and innovation across Europe.

From the outset of preparations for the EU’s tenth R&I framework programme (FP10), EUA has advocated for a programme that positions Europe as a leader in new knowledge and discoveries. The Association’s extensive engagement with policy makers and a wide range of stakeholders to achieve this is based on ‘Paving the way for impactful European R&I’, its strategic vision for an FP10, based on the expertise, needs and experiences of its member universities across Europe.

Discover EUA’s vision for FP10

With a particular focus on the programme's budget, structure, core principles and horizontal topics, EUA’s key recommendations call on to European policy makers to:

  1. Provide a well-balanced mix of support for basic research, applied research and innovation
  2. Increase the budget to at least €200 billion
  3. Ring-fence the budget
  4. Provide more funding opportunities for smaller, collaborative research projects
  5. Strengthen synergies between funding instruments and programmes
  6. Enhance excellence across Europe to bridge the R&I divide among countries
  7. Simplify the programme and its rules for participation
  8. Ensure responsible openness as the default option for global cooperation
  9. Improve the communication, dissemination and exploitation of research results

Enhance R&I stakeholder engagement during all stages of programme planning

FP10 Recommendations NL1

Why does Horizon Europe need a higher budget?

EU spending on R&I greatly pays off – for European science, societies and economies. However, as evaluations of the 2021-2027 Horizon Europe programme and its predecessor, Horizon 2020, show, the programme’s potential is greater, as it lacks the support needed to award all excellent proposals.

In short, Horizon Europe’s budget does not truly match Europe’s scientific capacity. EU investment in R&I has not been ambitious enough to keep up with demands from increasingly knowledge-dependent economies, nor the scale of challenges that need to be addressed.

Furthermore, Horizon Europe’s budget is frequently redirected to new priorities when funds are required to address new challenges. In parallel, the programme increasingly provides funding opportunities for projects focused on achieving quick and marketable results or linked to other EU political ambitions. This shift causes excessive focus on applied research and innovation to the detriment of bottom-up, curiosity-driven research, and thereby weakens Europe’s ability to address new and unforeseen challenges, particularly in the medium to long term.

In 2025, the European Commission proposed €175 billion for Horizon Europe under the EU’s 2028-2034 long-term budget (multiannual financial framework). While this is a welcome step forward, a budget of €200 billion would ensure that the programme achieves the greatest possible impact. Anything below this will inevitably reduce Horizon Europe’s effectiveness and limit its ability to drive Europe’s competitiveness.

Crucially, exceptionally high inflation and rising costs across Europe in recent years mean that the impact of this budget increase will be significantly less pronounced in practice. Although the proposed budget is nearly double that of Horizon Europe from 2021 to 2027, the number of researchers and innovators that can realistically be supported will be far fewer than double.

In addition to its own advocacy on behalf of Europe’s universities, EUA is actively partnering with key stakeholders across the R&I community to advocate for a substantially increased Horizon Europe budget. For example, EUA supports the Research Matters campaign, which is backed by a broad coalition of partners from universities, research organisations, funding agencies and industry in support of enhanced R&I investment.

Investing in what makes Europe strong

Horizon Europe and the European Competitiveness Fund

Horizon Europe must remain focused on excellent research, including collaborative research, rather than being repurposed as a tool to deliver on industrial or short-term political objectives.

Europe is operating in a highly competitive global environment, which changes its R&I paradigm. For example:

  • Although Europe has intensified its public and private R&I investments over the past two decades, its R&I intensity is still below that of South Korea, the United States and Japan.
  • China has become a dominant player in cutting-edge technologies, notably through large investments in R&I.
  • Interconnected crises, e.g. geopolitical tensions, climate change, rising energy costs and consequent high inflation, have all resulted in greater uncertainty.

This has shifted European political discourse towards the need to enhance the EU's strategic autonomy and resilience. In this context, the European Commission has proposed a new instrument, the European Competitiveness Fund, under the 2028-34 MFF. But what does this mean for European R&I, and what will the ECF’s relationship with the Horizon Europe programme be?

Horizon Europe stimulates research excellence, builds research capacity, fosters mobility, international and cross-sectoral cooperation and drives breakthrough innovation. These unique strengths make it an invaluable asset to Europe’s competitiveness and prosperity, which is why the programme must retain its independent identity, with the new Competitiveness Fund serving to complement rather than absorb it.

It is most welcome that Horizon Europe will remain a stand-alone programme. However, the proposed ‘tight connection’ with the ECF raises serious concerns about whether the programme’s autonomy and integrity, which are the very foundations of Horizon’s ability to deliver on its unique mission, will be safeguarded in practice.

In its detailed analysis of the Commission’s FP10 proposal, EUA raised a number of key points on the design of the two programmes.

Download EUA’s full analysis

Frequently asked questions

Horizon Europe is the European Union’s flagship funding programme for research and innovation. It succeeded the EU’s eighth framework programme for R&I, Horizon 2020, for a seven-year period beginning in 2021. The tenth framework programme (FP10) will retain the name Horizon Europe for the period 2028-2034.

This means that Horizon Europe is the cornerstone of the European R&I landscape. It encourages and facilitates collaboration between EU member states, universities, industries and other stakeholders to advance the frontiers of science, technology and innovation and tackle pressing societal challenges.

It is also a crucial instrument in shaping the direction and priorities of R&I across the continent, providing essential support to the European Research Area and driving significant public and private investments. Not least, it catalyses changes in national R&I systems, through its emphasis on excellence, Open Science, data management and gender equality.

Horizon Europe offers unique support to universities, enhancing their international reach and forging valuable partnerships beyond the limitations of national or regional funding aimed at challenges beyond national borders.

To fully capitalise on the unique role of universities in bringing together education and R&I for societal benefit and to maximise the capacities of universities as catalysts of innovation, it is vital to equip the programme with well-designed tools and adequate resources.

Horizon Europe’s funding streams include:

  • the European Research Council (ERC) Starting, Consolidator and Advanced grants for excellent frontier research;
  • the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), dedicated to doctoral and postdoctoral research, research mobility and training;
  • Research Infrastructures, supporting access to and development of world-class research infrastructures and services;
  • Pillar 2 collaborative research projects, organised in thematic clusters addressing major global challenges;
  • European Innovation Council (EIC) Pathfinder grants for breakthrough innovation projects, Transition grants to further develop the commercial potential of project results. (The EIC also awards Accelerator grants to scale-up disruptive technologies, which are only accessible to SMEs and start-ups, including university spin-offs.);
  • The European Innovation Ecosystems (EIE) component, supporting stronger and better-connected innovation ecosystems across Europe;
  • European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs), which bring together higher education, research and business to foster innovation;
  • Widening participation instruments, strengthening research and innovation capacity across Europe; and
  • European Research Area (ERA) actions, supporting reforms, research careers, Open Science, knowledge valorisation and the development of a stronger European R&I ecosystem.

Evaluations of the Horizon 2020 and 2021-2027 Horizon Europe programmes reveal numerous challenges that impede the programme's ability to drive transformative change in European R&I.

These include insufficient budget, the growing complexity of the programme, full implementation of widening measures and a lack of sufficient synergies with other European and national programmes and initiatives.

The Horizon Europe programme is established through EU legislation that sets its objectives, structure, budget, implementation and participation rules. While its overall budget depends on the EU’s long-term budget (multiannual financial framework), the Horizon Europe legislative proposals are negotiated separately.

The European Commission initiates the process by presenting its proposals. The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, comprised of the governments of EU member states, then examine them and adopt their negotiating positions.

Once both institutions have agreed their positions, they enter interinstitutional negotiations (trilogues) with the Commission to reach a final agreement. The Parliament and the Council jointly decide on the final legislation, while the programme’s overall budget depends on the outcome of the parallel MFF negotiations.

Under the 2021-27 Horizon Europe programme and its predecessors, the ‘civilian clause’ has restricted EU research funding to nonmilitary purposes.

However, the draft regulation for the 2028-2034 programme, or FP10, no longer includes this clause. This diverges from the preference of many universities as it represents a sudden shift from a longstanding consensus that could seriously impact the use of Horizon Europe.

As such, the European University Association advocates for limiting dual-use research to clearly identified parts of the programme with robust safeguards and opposes support for defence-only projects in the European Innovation Council.

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