10th European Framework Programme
Platforms
Shaping Europe’s Sustainable Future: Euro-CASE Statement on the 10th European Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (FP 10)
The member Academies of Euro-CASE are dedicated to promoting scientific and technological excellence and seeking innovative solutions in response to the collective global challenges of our society, in dialogue with European institutions and stakeholders, and in connection with the entire European research community. We are committed to responsible innovation1, ensuring that technological changes consider all social, environmental and economic impacts.
Europe’s scientific and technological leadership is a key factor in the competitiveness of its industry and economy and an essential component of its global independence. Responsible research-based innovation not only encourages the emergence of new industries, such as deep-tech start-ups, but continually feeds the development of existing industries and the economy at large. Ex-post evaluation of the Horizon 2020 (FP 8) framework programme2 has estimated that, for every euro invested in the European framework programme by 2020, European citizens will reap at least five euros of concrete benefits by 2040. This innovation not only brings economic benefits but is also an urgent necessity for the ecological, digital and energy transitions lying ahead of us.
Euro-CASE believes that the EU must go beyond Horizon Europe toward a more ambitious FP 10 programme committed to leading-edge research and innovation. The European continent remains the world’s largest producer of scientific knowledge and a major actor in global technological research, but world-wide competition is growing and cannot be ignored as described very clearly both in the recent Draghi Report3 and in the report of the Commission Expert Group on the interim evaluation of Horizon Europe4. Confronted with the enormous budgets currently invested in scientific and technological research in other parts of the world, and in particular in China and the United States, the European Research & Innovation (R&I) system will struggle to remain at the leading-edge (in both the public and private sectors) if it is not supported by an attractive and well-financed framework programme. For these reasons, Euro-CASE fully endorses the proposal of the out-going EU Parliament to substantially increase the framework programme budget, in order to guarantee sufficient FP 10 funding for the highest ranked proposals.