August 9, 2026

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August 9, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
New EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before AntalyaNew EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before Antalya

Researchers Fight to Keep Horizon Europe Independent

Moise Kean
Senior Reporter, Research and Innovation

Brussels: Research organisations across Europe pressed the Commission in July 2026 to keep Horizon Europe, the EU’s next research programme, legally and financially separate from the planned European Competitiveness Fund, warning that blurring the two could drain money from open science. The dispute has sharpened as budget negotiations for 2028 to 2034 accelerate.

Horizon Europe’s current edition ends in 2027, and its successor, informally known as FP10, will carry the same name. The Commission has proposed a budget of 175 billion euro and a new fourth pillar covering the European Research Area, alongside the existing pillars for excellent science, competitiveness and innovation.

The flashpoint is the 409 billion euro European Competitiveness Fund, which the Commission wants to link tightly to Horizon Europe to support what it calls the full innovation lifecycle. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen confirmed in June that the successor programme would remain standalone, but researchers say the practical meaning of that tight connection is still unclear.

Groups including the League of European Research Universities want the two instruments defined as two clearly distinct EU instruments, both legally and financially, inside the next Multiannual Financial Framework. They fear that pooling research money into a fund driven by industrial strategy would tilt spending toward near-market projects and away from curiosity-driven science.

We need, in the FP10 text, in the European Competitiveness Fund text, in black and white, what every part of the programme is going to get, said Kurt Deketelaere, secretary general of the League of European Research Universities.

Governments have started to weigh in. On 26 June 2026 the Council agreed a partial negotiating position on the 2028 to 2034 programme, a first step toward talks with Parliament. Denmark’s minister for higher education and science, Christina Egelund, said the structure of Horizon Europe and its connection to the fund would rank high during the Danish Council presidency, which began on 1 July 2026.

Researchers’ core demands are straightforward:

  • A separate legal base and ring-fenced budget for the research programme.
  • Clarity on which parts of the programme the fund would finance.
  • Protection for the European Research Council and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions.

The numbers explain the anxiety. Scientists had pushed for a far larger envelope, and the proposed 175 billion euro, while nominally the biggest yet, falls short of the 200 billion euro that university and industry groups had sought. Spreading that sum across a wider fund, they argue, would shrink the share reaching laboratories.

The Commission counters that closer ties would help promising discoveries reach the market and keep fast-growing companies in Europe rather than losing them to the United States or Asia. It casts the fund as a way to scale up strategic technologies in clean energy, biotech, artificial intelligence and defence.

The timetable leaves room for the argument to run. Trilogue negotiations between the Commission, Parliament and Council are expected in late 2026 and early 2027, with final adoption of the FP10 regulation pencilled in for summer 2027 and the first calls opening on 1 January 2028. The Commission Horizon Europe pages set out the current programme, while the Council long-term budget file tracks the wider talks. For now, Europe’s research community is betting that black-and-white guarantees, not political reassurance, will decide the programme’s fate.

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