The German Presidency of the Council of the EU will focus on Europe’s recovery and the challenge of laying the financial groundwork for making it a success.
1 July marks the start of the new Trio Presidency of Germany, Portugal, and Slovenia that will shape the EU agenda over the next 18 months. The German Presidency’s motto “Together for Europe’s recovery” summarizes the challenge ahead for a half year that will be strongly influenced by coping with the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. This includes the challenge to build consensus among the Member States (MS) for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2021-2027 and the recovery instrument “Next Generation EU”.
The German Presidency, similarly as the European Commission (EC), adheres to the pre-crisis priorities of the “European Green Deal” and “a Europe fit for the digital age”. What has changed with the pandemic-induced recession is the plan to use investments in the green and digital transitions as drivers for economic recovery. Education, research and innovation (ERI) will be of major importance in making this happen and play therefore a key part in the German Presidency’s programme. Another important ERI-related topic will be the envisioned strengthening of Europe’s tech sovereignty.
Germany hopes to achieve progress in a series of legislative files in the ERI field (see SwissCore article for the education part). The most important one is the Horizon Europe legislative package, where the important topics of association, budget issues, and synergies with other EU programmes still need to be negotiated. Germany’s goal is to find a Council position on Horizon Europe after the summer and to conclude trilogue negotiations with the European Parliament (EP) and the EC in autumn, which would require that an agreement on the MFF and the recovery instrument can be found before. Other important R&I files that await conclusion are the legislative package of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), the Digital Europe Programme (DEP), Euratom and the nuclear fusion project ITER. The German Presidency also strives to adopt Council Conclusions on the European Research Area (ERA), building on an EC Communication on ERA, expected in the coming weeks. The goal of the renewed ERA is to make European society and economy more resilient to cope with pandemics and other global challenges. Germany envisions also more directionality towards common goals; an important topic will be to promote green hydrogen.
After the EC’s proposals for an updated MFF 2021-2027 and the new “Next Generation EU” recovery instrument in late May, the EP’s political groups commented largely positive (see SwissCore article). Reactions from the Committees on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and Culture and Education Committee (CULT) were less enthusiastic and criticised mainly that the budget proposals for Horizon Europe and Erasmus+ were too low, especially against the backdrop of the ambition levels for decarbonisation, digitalisation, and coping with the economic crisis. This view is largely shared among the European associations in the ERI field. While stakeholders welcome the new budget and recovery proposals in general, they are in line with ITRE and CULT and think that the EU’s knowledge programmes need higher budgets to achieve the green and digital goals. Another point of agreement is a call on the MS and the EP to act quickly and adopt the MFF 2021-2027 and the recovery instrument, in order to allow for a timely start of the new generation of programmes in early 2021.
The European Universities Association (EUA) in its statement supports the EP’s bid for a EUR 120 billion budget for Horizon Europe. In the case of Erasmus+ and similar to the CULT committee, EUA notes that the budget will not be sufficient to fund new and far-reaching ambitions, such as the European Universities Initiative. The League of European Research Universities (LERU) concludes that the proposals are far off from its position that EUR 160 billion will be needed for Horizon Europe. In addition, LERU asks for more clarification on the EUR 13.5 billion (2018 prices) that the EC intends to add to Horizon Europe via the recovery instrument: “Will all or most health, climate and digital-related research in Horizon Europe be funded using this EUR 13.5 billion? Or is this budget meant to fund additional research and innovation in these areas?” The Guild calls for “an exclusive focus on, and a proper balance between, research and innovation”.
Similar to its fellow university associations, the leading universities of science and technology united within CESAER, in a position paper note that the current MFF/recovery instrument proposals are not foreseeing enough investment in R&I. CASAER calls for more coordinated actions, such as the ERAvsCorona action plan and the #EUvsVirus initiative. The document cautions “against disturbing the balance between bottom-up and top-down approaches”. This concern is based on the EC’s plan to invest the EUR 13.5 billion from Next Generation EU in three Clusters (health, digital, climate) of the “Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness” Pillar 2 and in the European Innovation Council of the “Innovative Europe” Pillar 3 of Horizon Europe. CESAER states that “it is vital to add funding” in the “Excellent Science” Pillar 1. The lifelong learning platform, an umbrella that gathers 42 European organisations active in the field of education criticises that the proposed budget for Erasmus+, at EUR 24.6 billion (in 2018 prices) “falls short of the ambition expressed by the EP and the EC President Ursula Von der Leyen herself”.
The European Association of Research and Technology Organisations (EARTO) in a press release holds a slightly different view to the positions of the university associations. EARTO fears that the recession will lead to a drop of private R&I investments and asks that the funding from the recovery instrument earmarked for Horizon Europe should be used to assure that Pillar 2 receives at least 60% of the total Horizon Europe budget. This is in line with a joint position paper that EARTO signed already in 2019, together with 92 other associations. The Research and Technology Organisations also stressed the importance of synergies between other EU funded programmes and Horizon Europe that could help technologies reach market maturity. EARTO views the EUR 8.2 billion budget for the DEP not sufficient for the EC’s ambitions to achieve the digital transition and regrets the proposed cuts for the European Space and Defence programmes. EARTO demands that the new Recovery & Resilience Facility under Next Generation EU should include earmarked R&I investments to achieve the targets for the green and digital transitions and requests that MS can transfer up to 5% of their Cohesion Funds to other EU programmes in order to create synergies.
While the discussions on the next MFF 2021-2027 and the Next Generation EU recovery instrument are in full swing, the EC published on 24 June its proposal for the 2021 budget. The EC plans to use more than a third of the Next Generation EU money for Horizon Europe already in 2021, EUR 5 billion of a total of EUR 17.3 billion. Furthermore, the proposed budget allocations include EUR 2.89 billion for Erasmus+, and EUR 1.34 billion for the Digital Europe programme. Precondition for next year’s budget will be a consensus on the MFF and the recovery instrument.