After four long years of exclusion, Switzerland is finally back in Horizon Europe, with full association retroactively effective from 1 January 2025.
Having been absent since 2021, Switzerland is finally officially back in the European framework programme for research and innovation. On 10 November 2025, Swiss Federal Councillor Guy Parmelin and European Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva signed the new Switzerland-EU programmes agreement – or, in short, EUPA. This international agreement provides the basis for Swiss participation in and association to EU programmes. With the agreement now in force, Switzerland is retroactively associated to Horizon Europe, Digital Europe, and Euratom as of 1 January 2025. This association enables Swiss researchers and institutions to participate fully in EU-funded projects, fostering greater collaboration and innovation. Furthermore, the EUPA also lays the foundation to be part of ITER in 2026, Erasmus+ in 2027 and EU4Health in the near future. The budget for Erasmus+ should be approved by the Swiss Parliament in 2026; and the participation in EU4Health is linked to a new health agreement that Switzerland and the EU concluded. During the signing ceremony, Commissioner Zaharieva said that Swiss-EU collaboration in research, innovation and education is important for all of Europe.
In parallel with these developments, the EU institutions have reached an agreement on the 2026 budget. On 20 November 2025 the European Parliament approved the final version. In the inter-institutional negotiations, the Parliament secured higher budgets compared to the Commission’s initial proposal and the Council’s suggested budget cuts for several programmes. This also includes top-ups of €20 million for Horizon Europe (to a total of €13 billion for 2026), €3 million for EU4Health, and also €3 million more for Erasmus+ (to a total of €4.3 billion for 2026). The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) will also have a top-up of €23.5 million. This sets the EU’s overall budget for 2026 at €192.8 billion with budget increases for topics that are considered political priorities, such as research, health and civil security.
“We want to lead the biotech revolution”, with these words, the European Environment Commissioner, Jessika Roswall, unveiled the new Bioeconomy Strategy on 27 November 2025 at a press conference surrounded by bio-based products from cosmetics to edible packaging. This initiative was announced in the Commission’s Competitiveness Compass early this year (see SwissCore article). On the one hand, the Strategy aims to boost innovation and competitiveness in this sector, which is worth between €1.9 and €2.7 trillion (which represents 11-16% of EU GDP); on the other hand, it contributes to the Green Deal goals of decarbonisation as it aims to boost the use of sustainable bio-based products by 2040, gradually replacing fossil-fuel based products, most notably plastics and fertilisers. Finally, this reduction on the reliance on imported fossil-based products also contributes to the EU’s so-called strategic autonomy, as Europe is largely self-sufficient in biomass.
The initiative, officially entitled ‘Strategic Framework for a Competitive and Sustainable EU Bioeconomy’ consists of four pillars: i. scaling innovation and investments, ii. building new lead markets for bio-based materials and technologies, iii. ensuring sustainable biomass supply across value chains, iv. harnessing global opportunities. The strategy bears relevance for Horizon Europe as well. In Horizon Europe, funding for the bioeconomy sectors is available in Cluster 6 with a few hundred million euros per year, mostly focusing on innovative circular and bio-based materials, products, processes and value chains for consumers and industry, as well as sustainable forestry. In the next Horizon framework programme FP10, the bioeconomy is expected to be supported in a new policy window subsuming ‘health, biotech, agriculture and bioeconomy’. The strategy may lead to more call topics on circular bio-based systems, sustainable biomass sourcing and industrial-scale biomanufacturing under the framework programme for R&I.
Concretely, the first strategic pillar of the new Bioeconomy Strategy on Scaling up innovation and investment includes streamlining requirements and facilitating market entry for new products, stimulating innovation and investment in start-ups and especially SMEs. The Commission says that deployment of new biobased products is too slow, therefore, they want to de-risk investments and improve access to finance, for example with the Scale-up Europe Fund.
The Swiss start-up Bloom Biorenewables is a strong example of how Swiss innovation directly contributes to strengthening European bioeconomy (see SwissCore article). This highlights the significant, mutually beneficial potential for future research and innovation collaboration between Switzerland and the EU within Horizon Europe and beyond.