EESC welcomes increased Horizon EU budget but calls for stronger governance

EU's expanded budget envelope for Horizon Europe sends a strong political signal underscoring Europe's ambition to strengthen competitiveness and strategic autonomy, EESC says

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) has welcomed the European Commission proposal for Horizon Europe, the EU’s flagship programme for funding research and innovation, underlining that science, research and innovation must remain central to the European project.

At a time of intensifying global competition and rapid technological change, a strong and well-governed EU research and innovation policy is essential to reinforcing Europe’s competitiveness, cohesion and strategic autonomy, while delivering tangible benefits for citizens across all Member States, the EESC stressed in an opinion adopted at its January plenary.

“The EU’s commitment of EUR 175 billion to research and innovation for the 2028–2034 period sends a strong signal in favour of scientific excellence, sound governance and strategic impact. In this context, the EESC has identified the priorities to improve the mechanisms currently under development,” said Christophe Lefèvre, rapporteur of the opinion.

The new investment represents a substantial increase compared to EUR 95 billion under the previous programming cycle.

However, the EESC stressed that this amount should be used only as a baseline for negotiations between the Council and the European Parliament. Any reduction below this level would represent a missed opportunity at a time when sustained investment in R&I was essential for Europe’s competitiveness, resilience and strategic autonomy. The EESC also warned that high inflation and rising costs risked diminishing the real value of the proposed funding envelope.

A central concern of the opinion was the need to strengthen monitoring of how Horizon Europe funds were used. The EESC considered it imperative to identify obstacles to fund uptake and ascertain the factors behind underspending in certain countries, in order to ensure fair access, effective implementation and optimal use of EU resources.

The Committee also strongly recommended maintaining and correctly aligning Horizon Europe with the European Competitiveness Fund, particularly between the fund’s four policy components and the corresponding activities under Pillar II of Horizon Europe, “Competitiveness”.

It noted that the absence of a detailed budget breakdown for most programme pillars made it difficult to assess whether Horizon Europe’s stated objectives would be effectively delivered and pointed to a significant imbalance within Pillar II between funding for “Competitiveness” and for societal challenges.

To ensure coherence across EU instruments and support the full innovation cycle, the EESC called for project assessment and selection procedures to go beyond scientific excellence alone. It stated that additional evaluation criteria were needed to better capture commercial relevance, industrial impact and contributions to European strategic autonomy and the competitiveness of European industry.

Mr Lefèvre stressed that increased investment had to be accompanied by effective governance and robust monitoring to support the entire innovation pathway, from frontier research to market deployment.

The opinion also addressed governance issues, notably at the European Research Council (ERC). The EESC recommended maintaining a four-year term of office for the President of the ERC, renewable once, rather than reducing it to two years. Shortening the mandate would weaken the ERC’s autonomy and its ability to support long-term, high-risk frontier research.

With regard to Pillar I, the EESC stressed that research excellence and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions should not be guided by any particular policy orientation. It firmly supported maintaining a bottom-up approach to research and cautioned that a shift towards top-down directionality could have undermined Europe’s long-term capacity to generate breakthrough knowledge.

Finally, the EESC urged the utmost caution regarding the proposed condition linking capacity-building funding under Pillar IV, the European Research Area, to a target of 3% of GDP investment in R&D from 2030 onwards. The Committee warned that such a condition could have disproportionately affected beneficiaries in countries with lower research and innovation capacities.

The EESC concluded that Horizon Europe can play a decisive role in strengthening Europe’s research and innovation base, provided that ambition is matched by robust governance, effective monitoring and balanced implementation across all pillars.