A large majority of MEPs today adopted the Horizon 2020 package in the European Parliament's plenary session in Strasbourg. The package includes Maria da Graça Carvalho's Report on the Specific Programme implementing Horizon 2020 and Christian Ehler's Report on the rules for participation and dissemination in Horizon 2020.
"Horizon 2020 is the largest funding programme for research and innovation worldwide with a budget of €79.4 billion. Horizon 2020 will finance all types of organisations - SMEs, young entrepreneurs, industry, universities - and will cover the whole innovation cycle from basic research to demonstration projects until the entry of a product or service on the market", said Rapporteur Maria da Graça Carvalho.
"However, Horizon 2020 is not only the largest, but also the most ambitious R&D funding programme the EU has ever seen. Many novelties, such as the dedicated SME instrument with a substantial budget of €3 billion and a new bottom-up funding scheme, the so-called 'Fast Track to Innovation' as well as more money for blue-sky research have made the programme innovative, flexible and demand-driven", stated Rapporteur Christian Ehler.
"Youth unemployment is a major problem and has spread through Europe. Horizon 2020 promotes employment through direct recruitment of human resources, for example, each €1 billion spent from Horizon 2020 funds 4000 innovative SMEs, or 600 researchers and their teams through ERC grants, or 2500 Marie Curie scholarships, or 240 large projects involving on average 2600 industry bodies and academia", added the Portuguese MEP Maria da Graça Carvalho.
"The cut of roughly €10 billion in comparison to the budget the European Commission had initially foreseen hurts. The overall budget for Horizon 2020 does not live up to its ambitious goals. We could say that the money we have obtained will be better spent, but €70.2 billion is far from the €100 billion the Parliament had initially called for and it will not be sufficient to ensure Europe's competitiveness in a global economy that runs on innovation. Member States know this. Only recently, in 2010, they had promised to increase their spending on research and innovation to 3% of the GDP by 2020. It seems they have already forgotten about this target. Let's hope they remember sooner rather than later for the sake of our researchers and to safeguard Europe's innovation-based economy", concluded the German MEP Christian Ehler, who is also Shadow Rapporteur for the Horizon 2020 Framework Regulation.
Horizon 2020 is the third largest EU programme and the biggest supporter of research and innovation in the world.