Ministers are urging firms to faucet the EU’s Horizon analysis programme to get worth for the close to €2.5bn the UK authorities is paying yearly to reconnect to the scheme after Brexit.
The federal government will launch an promoting blitz on Monday aimed primarily at tens of hundreds of companies which are eligible for funding from the €95.5bn pot however have by no means utilized.
The publicity marketing campaign highlights the stress on trade and academia to plug into Horizon after the Treasury and prime minister Rishi Sunak questioned beforehand whether or not it was a great funding.
The UK relinked to the Horizon science programme this month, beneath a deal beforehand stalled by disagreements with the EU on different elements of Brexit.
“That is the world’s largest analysis collaboration challenge,” mentioned Michelle Donelan, secretary of state for science, trade and expertise. “We now have this unimaginable alternative. Let’s not waste it — let’s seize it.”
The federal government initiative is concentrating on smaller firms specifically, because it believes they’re an untapped supply of Horizon functions. Officers estimate there are about 65,000 UK companies with analysis and growth pursuits that make them eligible for Horizon funding.
Profitable UK functions to the programme totalled about 2,400 in 2015, the 12 months earlier than the Brexit referendum, in accordance with the identical official estimates. They’d fallen to round 2,000 in 2020, the final 12 months earlier than Brexit took the UK out of the scheme, a decline that mirrored partially uncertainties about the way forward for the UK-EU relationship.
The federal government is highlighting examples akin to Nova Innovation, which is a part of a pan-European consortium benefiting from €20mn of Horizon funding to develop tidal vitality in Orkney.
“We need to encourage, incentivise and allow folks to have the ability to take part — and make it possible for it’s as open and accessible as attainable,” Donelan mentioned in an interview. “So [we are] concentrating on people who wouldn’t usually prior to now have probably recognized about Horizon or received concerned.”
The promoting marketing campaign on billboards, social media and audio will search to revive Britain’s as soon as main place in Horizon after a three-year absence. The primary marketing campaign visuals don’t point out the EU, citing as a substitute “Horizon Europe” — the title of the scheme’s present seven 12 months grant-making programme.
Donelan defended the choice to minimize the EU dimension of Horizon. “It says ‘Europe’,” she mentioned of the promotional materials. “Don’t neglect Horizon isn’t just an EU scheme,” she added, pointing to the involvement in it of different non-EU “affiliate nations” akin to New Zealand and Israel.
Donelan mentioned she was not anxious that the marketing campaign is perhaps unintentionally undermined by the unrelated scandal over the Submit Workplace’s Horizon laptop system.
The visuals “all clearly present science or expertise or house”, in addition to together with accompanying textual content about Horizon Europe. “I don’t suppose anyone — as soon as they see the artistic — shall be confused by that,” she mentioned.
The newest authorities push on Horizon Europe comes because it provides “pump-priming” grants of as much as £10,000 for potential candidates, administered through the British Academy, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering.
These funds are to assist UK-based researchers and companies put together proposals for collaborations with counterparts within the 27-member EU or different Horizon affiliate nations.
