According to a recent Science | Business article, new research commissioner Marya Gabriel is struggling to defend Horizon Europe’s planned budget.
The European Commission’s proposal for the budget to be allocated to the next European framework program dedicated to research and innovation is in fact challenged by the current impasse among national governments on the European budget to be allocated to the next programming period 2021-2027.
If the European Parliament has already declared that it wants to increase the budget to be allocated to Horizon Europe to € 120 billion, the final decision will still be left to the Member States that will have to reach a unanimous agreement on the next European budget. In the current discussion, the increasingly probable Brexit and the resulting missing contribution that will lead to the abandonment of the United Kingdom is also weighing; in addition, five other net contributors – Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Denmark – are pushing for a 2021-2027 budget lower than the Commission proposal.
(Source: FIRST)