August 9, 2026

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The European Post

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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 Await a Verdict as the Next Funding Era Takes Shape

Ingrid Kittelsen
Policy Reporter, Agriculture and Food Security

Gothenburg: Europe’s scientists are watching the slow assembly of the programme that will bankroll their laboratories into the next decade, and a key piece fell into place in late June. The Council agreed a partial negotiating position on the successor to the current research framework, covering both the regulation that would establish it and the decision setting out how the money is spent.

The programme, which the Commission confirmed last year will keep the familiar Horizon Europe name rather than adopt the FP10 label used in Brussels shorthand, is due to run from 2028 to 2034. The Commission’s proposal, unveiled alongside its plan for the Union’s next long-term budget, carries a headline figure of 175 billion euros and introduces a new fourth pillar to the programme’s architecture. That structure, and the sum attached to it, has become the focus of an intense lobbying effort by universities, research institutes and industry.

The most contentious question is not the name but the company the programme will keep. The Commission has bound research funding more tightly to a broader competitiveness agenda, and early drafts raised the prospect of folding it into a larger European Competitiveness Fund. After sustained resistance from the research community and members of the Parliament, the Commission confirmed the programme would remain a stand-alone effort, though more closely tied to the Union’s industrial ambitions than its predecessors. For many scientists that reassurance is necessary but not sufficient, given fears that curiosity-driven research could be squeezed by demands for near-term commercial return.

Why it matters is a story of competitiveness and talent. Europe frets openly about lagging behind the United States and China in the technologies expected to define the coming decades, and its framework programmes are the largest coordinated tool it has to close the gap. They fund everything from fundamental physics to clinical trials and startup scale-ups, and they help keep researchers from decamping to better-resourced labs abroad. A budget seen as too small, or too tilted toward applied work, would sharpen those anxieties rather than ease them.

The fault lines are already visible. Some argue the 175-billion-euro figure, while large, is modest against the scale of the challenge, and a few voices in the sector have called for the programme to be underpinned by fresh common borrowing of the kind used during the pandemic recovery. Others worry the tighter link to competitiveness will crowd out basic science and smaller research teams. Net-contributing governments, meanwhile, will resist any push to inflate the total as they haggle over the wider budget.

What comes next is a long negotiation. The Council’s partial position opens the way to trilogues with the Parliament and Commission, expected to stretch into 2027, with final adoption of the regulation and the first strategic plan pencilled in for that summer and the opening calls landing as the programme launches in January 2028. For a researcher in Gothenburg planning a project that may not start for two years, the shape of that bargain, more than its branding, will determine what European science can afford to attempt.

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