Horizon Europe promotes excellence and provide valuable support to leading researchers and innovators in advancing the systemic change needed to ensure a green, healthy and resilient Europe.
The programme promotes scientific excellence through the European Research Council (ERC) to enable top researchers to expand their knowledge to meet our economic and social challenges. Marie Skłodowska-Curie Scholarships and Exchanges will help the best talent among young researchers to expand their knowledge and skills. Europe will benefit from the scientific advice, technical support and research of the Joint Research Center (JRC), the Commission’s Office for Science and Knowledge.
The programme will also support collaborative research on the social challenges facing Europe and strengthen technological and industrial capacity through clusters covering the full range of global challenges. At the same time, a number of European partnerships will encourage broad public and private sector involvement, covering critical areas such as energy, transport, biodiversity, health, food and cyclicality.
Horizon Europe will also encourage participation in research, reduce the research-innovation gap and strengthen the European Research Area (ERA) through a wide range of measures to support countries with low research-innovation performance, for example through the establishment of centres of excellence, the improvement of their skills and the facilitation of collaborative links.
In addition, the programme will introduce new features, such as the European Innovation Council (EIC) and the EU missions. The EIC, which is already running on a pilot phase, will receive a budget of over €10 billion to support emerging and revolutionary innovations from SMEs, start-ups and mid-cap companies and will complement the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).
European missions will focus on ambitious, time-bound and achievable goals for solving common European challenges. The goals to be achieved by 2030 are the following:
- saving 3 million lives from cancer,
- 100 climate-neutral cities,
- healthy oceans, seas and inland waters,
- healthy soils and food,
- areas resistant to climate change.
Particular attention will also be paid to coordinating activities funded through Horizon Europe with those supported by other EU programmes, such as InvestEU, Erasmus+, the funds under the EU cohesion policy umbrella, Digital Europe, the Connecting Europe Facility and the Recovery and Resilience Facility, to promote faster dissemination at national and regional level and to exploit the results of research and innovation.
Importantly, for the first time in the history of the framework programme, regions can, on a voluntary basis, transfer part of their regional funding to Horizon Europe for use in research and innovation activities in their region.