New MFF reflections of the EU aim to end business as usual, including for research and innovation funding from 2028 onwards.
This month the European Commission gave a glimpse into their plans for the next seven-year overall budget for the EU, the so-called multiannual financial framework (MFF). This concerns the period 2028-2034 and is the basis for the structure and the budget of the next generation of programmes, including Erasmus+ and the tenth framework programme for research and innovation (FP10). The Commission Communication is entitled ‘The Road to the next Multiannual Financial Framework’ and contains some noteworthy elements to prepare the ground for revolutionary changes to the budget processes of the EU that could impact how EU research and innovation funding work as well.
The premise of the document is that the MFF proposal has to be ‘the end of business as usual’ in the words of Commissioner Šefčovič. This is the starting point of Commission President von der Leyen’s reflections on why the EU’s long-term budget has to change to adapt to the new financial and geopolitical context in which the EU finds itself in. The proposal will revamp the way the EU disperses money significantly. One such change is that the EU budget should be organised as one plan for each EU Member State that specifies key investments based on conditions for reforms in that country. This would potentially bundle many of the current funding pots, such as the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund and others. This single plan would likely take power away from the regional and local authorities, which have therefore already announced their resistance to such changes.
A second revolutionary proposal is the establishment of a new European Competitiveness Fund that would merge and bundle many EU programmes and instruments that contribute to industry and innovation in the broad sense. This could include the successor of Horizon Europe, FP10, as well. The official goal of this European Competitiveness Fund is to establish a fund with a huge budget and investment capacity to support strategic technology sectors in Europe. This is based on the analysis of the EU that “public funding on research and innovation in Europe lacks scale” and more concrete action is needed to address the challenge of the innovation gap identified by the Draghi report (see SwissCore article). In short, the Competitiveness Fund would pool several programmes, such as FP10, Digital Europe, EU4Health, Innovation Fund, and others, and set common guidelines and rules for all programmes, for example regarding participation conditions, eligibility rules and policy goals. Furthermore, the Fund would create increased flexibility and enable the reallocation of budget between the elements of the Fund to respond to potentially changing policy priorities. A positive effect of this pooling and merging could be simplification, with the result that beneficiaries find it easier to access the funds, as the rules are harmonised.
This revolutionary proposal for the Competitiveness Fund has created strong resistance from the research and innovation communities and stakeholders in Brussels: CESAER, EARTO, ERT, EUA, LERU, Science Europe and the Guild have recently issued a joint statement calling for caution and the potentially detrimental impact on research and innovation funding in the EU. The Research Ministers of the EU are also expected to express their opinion at the next meeting in March.
After the publication, the Commission also opened a public consultation to gather feedback on their proposal. It is accessible online and open until 6 May 2025, including for non-EU institutions and countries. In parallel a citizens’ panel of 150 randomly selected Europeans will debate the proposal and make recommendations for the EU budget. The official proposal for the next MFF, based on the feedback received, is expected to be published by the Commission in July 2025.