Stockholm: The mid-term assessment of Horizon Europe has crystallised debates that have run through European research policy for a decade. The framework programme remains one of the largest publicly funded research instruments in the world, and its design choices influence not only European laboratories but global scientific collaboration. The assessment surfaces three structural questions that the design of the successor programme will need to address.
The first is the balance between excellence-driven, bottom-up research funded through the European Research Council and the European Innovation Council, and mission-oriented or thematic funding that aligns research with policy priorities including climate, health, security and digital transformation. The current programme attempted to do both at substantial scale, and the experience has been that excellence-driven instruments have continued to deliver high-quality science while mission-oriented instruments have struggled with definition, governance and absorption capacity. Several missions have been recalibrated mid-stream, and the question of whether the model is fit for the next programme is genuinely open.
The second is the geography of participation. The bulk of competitive funding continues to flow to research-intensive member states with established institutional capacity, while widening instruments have only partially closed the gap with newer member states. The widening package, which includes teaming, twinning, ERA chairs and similar instruments, has produced measurable improvements in specific institutions but has not fundamentally altered the distribution of grant winners across the bloc. The political case for the next programme requires a credible answer on this, and several proposals have circulated for a more ambitious widening pillar or for the introduction of preferential rules in collaborative grants.
The third is the relationship with national research systems and with global partners. The successive episodes of restricted association of third countries, including the protracted process around the United Kingdom and the more recent debates on Switzerland, have demonstrated that science remains a sensitive geopolitical instrument. The European research area depends on porous borders to deliver competitive science, and the political constraints on association have created risks of fragmentation. At the same time, concerns about technology transfer in dual-use research have grown, and the Commission has issued guidance on security-related research participation that has been received with some uncertainty by the scientific community.
Sweden’s position in these debates reflects its scientific profile. The country is consistently among the top per capita beneficiaries of competitive grants, hosts several of the leading research universities and a strong industrial research base, and has been an articulate advocate for excellence-based allocation. At the same time, the Swedish research community has been engaged in the geographic balance discussion, recognising that the sustainability of the European research area depends on broader participation rather than concentration in a handful of regions.
The fiscal frame of the next programme is uncertain. Research has been one of the headings most vulnerable to redirection toward other priorities under the current framework, and the assumption that the next programme will be substantially larger than the current one cannot be taken for granted. The case for sustained investment in research is intellectually unassailable but politically subject to competing claims, and the scientific community has not always made the strategic argument as effectively as it could.
What the next programme should aim to achieve is a clearer division of labour between European-level funding and national research systems, a more coherent approach to mission-oriented research, a credible widening strategy that delivers measurable convergence and a stable approach to international cooperation that reflects the geopolitical realities without abandoning the openness on which scientific excellence depends. The assessment provides the diagnostic; the political design choices follow.
