The provisional agreement between the Commission, Parliament and the Council (provisional agreement) on Horizon Europe, the EU’s R&I framework program 2021-27, was closed on the night of Wednesday 19 March. Tonight’s agreement comes after ten months of legislative examination of the dossier – the Commission’s proposal dates back to June 2018 – and three months of intense negotiation (six informal trilogues in just over two months) and allows the EU institutions to reach the planned objective at the beginning of the process: to close a political agreement on most of the text of the next program before the end of the current legislature and the European elections next May.
What is in the agreement (and what is not there)
The agreement concluded tonight defines a “consolidated” legislative text of the next program, which includes, among other things: the general and specific objectives, the structure and articulation in pillars, the names of the clusters, the possible areas for missions and partnerships and the criteria for identifying and defining them, the rules for participation and funding, the rules on ethics and safety, the evaluation criteria, the structure, the objectives and the contents of the European Innovation Council.
The provisional agreement, on the other hand, leaves out the horizontal aspects, subject to the general agreement on EU programming 2021-27: the overall budget of the program and its internal distribution; the rules on the association of third countries; synergies with other sectoral programs.
What happens now
The interim agreement closed tonight, which will be formally approved in the coming weeks by both the Parliament and the Council, and the definition of a “consolidated” legislative text is what the European Commission expected to start the strategic planning of Horizon Europe, the process that from the legislative texts it will lead to the definition of work programs and the first calls for funding of the next program.
On the legislative level, the final adoption of the text will not follow the closure of the agreement and its formal approval in Parliament and the Council. The negotiations will continue in the first months of the next legislature – the new Commission and the new Parliament – to define the parts not covered by the provisional agreement.
