Leuven: The European Parliament’s industry committee adopted its FP10 reports on 10 September 2026, clearing the way for a plenary vote in the first half of October that will hand MEPs a negotiating mandate on the European Union’s research programme for 2028 to 2034. Christian Ehler carried the main regulation and René Repasi the decision on the specific programme, and both texts leave Parliament a long way from national capitals on money.

The arithmetic drives the whole dispute. The Commission proposed €175 billion for FP10 when it tabled the next multiannual financial framework. Budget negotiators have since worked from a lower preliminary figure of €167.9 billion in current prices. Parliament wants €200 billion, and Ehler has anchored that demand in the Draghi competitiveness report and the Heitor expert review.

Parliament is clear and firm in its demand for a 200 billion euro budget, Ehler has said, framing the figure as a floor rather than an opening bid.

The gap looks wider still against the current programme. Horizon Europe runs on €93.5 billion for 2021 to 2027, so even the Commission’s number would roughly double the envelope. Research organisations across the bloc spent the summer arguing that the headline rise shrinks once inflation and a seven-year span are priced in.

Member states moved first. The Council agreed a partial negotiating position on 26 June 2026 covering both the regulation and the specific programme decision, and it left the budget line out of that mandate because the figure sits inside the wider MFF talks. Governments also pressed for a stronger say over how research priorities get set, a demand reported from the Council working party and one that Parliament’s rapporteurs resist.

Three questions now travel into trilogue:

• the overall envelope, and whether research money stays ring-fenced inside a restructured MFF;
• governance, including how much control the Commission keeps over strategic planning and work programmes;
• the future of Widening measures for lower-performing research systems, which Parliament’s negotiators want kept as a named strand.

University groups read the committee texts as a win on structure even before the money is settled. The European University Association called the rapporteurs’ drafts a set of baselines for governance and funding in an assessment published after the texts were tabled in March 2026.

Timing matters more than usual. Negotiators want political agreement on the multiannual budget by the end of 2026, which would push FP10 trilogues into late 2026 and early 2027. Miss that window and the programme risks the same late start that bunched Horizon Europe’s first calls into a single crowded year.

Background explains why MEPs picked this fight now. FP10 replaces Horizon Europe from 1 January 2028 and, under the Commission’s design, sits inside a larger competitiveness fund rather than standing alone as its own heading. Parliament has objected to that architecture since the proposal landed, arguing that a merged fund lets finance ministers raid research lines when other priorities bite. The programme’s partnership structure is in play too, with pressure to cut the number of European Partnerships and simplify how they report.

Nothing binds anyone yet. The October vote fixes Parliament’s mandate, not the outcome, and the Council deliberately left its hardest cards unplayed until heads of government settle the budget.