Commission to invest €11 billion in new solutions for societal challenges and drive innovation-led sustainable growth

The European Commission announced how it will spend the last and biggest annual tranche – €11 billion – of the EU research and innovation funding programme Horizon 2020 in the final year of the programme.

Horizon 2020, the EU’s €77 billion research and innovation funding programme for the period 2014-2020, supports scientific excellence in Europe and has contributed to high-profile scientific breakthroughs such as the discovery of exoplanets, first images of a black hole and development of advanced vaccines for diseases such as Ebola.

The Commission announced the budget plan for the year 2020 for Horizon 2020. Over the next year, the Commission will seek greater impact of its research funding by focusing on fewer, but crucial, topics such as climate change, clean energy, plastics, cybersecurity and the digital economy. It will also be geared towards shaping the future research and innovation landscape by preparing the way for Horizon Europe, the next framework programme (2021-2027). An important novelty under Horizon Europe will be the European Innovation Council – a one-stop-shop for innovation funding to turn science into new business and accelerate the scale-up of companies. The European Innovation Council is already running in its pilot phase and will in 2020 benefit from a budget of €1.2 billion.

This Work Programme will support the budget for 2018-2020 and the Commission’s political priorities, in the following areas:

• A low-carbon, climate resilient future: €3.7 billion
• Circular economy: €1 billion
• Digitising and transforming European industry and services: €1.8 billion
• Security Union: €1 billion

In 2020, €206 million is earmarked for projects to transform sectors that are traditionally energy intensive into competitive, low-carbon and circular industries and to significantly lower their environmental footprint. €132 million will support the development and production in Europe of the next generation of batteries, as part of the drive towards a low-carbon, climate-resilient future. Ten new topics on plastics with a total budget of €135 million contribute in different ways to the EU Plastics Strategy. Artificial intelligence, which is at the core of today’s most promising breakthroughs, has a budget of €396 million and €116 million is earmarked for developing new capabilities for fighting and preventing cybercrime.

Original source: European Commission
Published on 02 July 2019