You wouldn’t normally electrify the world with a press release detailing a formal UK legal demand for discussions and possible arbitration about non-admission to Horizon Europe, a EU-led scientific research programme which in all probability most people will never have heard of. But, as you may have gathered from recent news reports, there is more to this episode than meets the eye. It actually tells us a fair amount about the Brexit process, and perhaps more about the EU.
Set up in 2021 by the EU with a budget of €95.5 billion to be spent over seven years, Horizon Europe is a kind of super Euro-research council: an institution dedicated to promoting and funding high-powered international scientific research with public money. At the time of Brexit, the 2020 UK-EU trade agreement made it clear that all parties contemplated the UK being in, contributing comfortably over €15 billion. This mattered both for the EU (in serious science the UK’s top universities punch well above their weight, and certainly above the EU’s) and also for UK researchers (who would get access to generous research funds and very productive international cooperation).
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