Heitor report is most compelling vision yet for EU’s post-Horizon future

After a year’s deliberations, the expert group chaired by Manuel Heitor, the former Portuguese science minister, has produced its recommendations for the European Union’s next Framework Programme for research and innovation (R&I), known as FP10.

Previous documents have already underlined the urgency of investing in R&I at a time of growing technological and economic global rivalry, among them the Draghi report on Europe’s competitiveness and Europe’s Choice, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s strategy for the next commission. But the Heitor report is alone in providing a detailed framework for the design of FP10.

Its thinking for the 2028-35 framework is structured in four “spheres”: competitive excellence in science and innovation; industrial competitiveness through strategic R&I initiatives to provide state-of-the-art products, services and technology-based solutions; societal transformations through addressing grand challenges; strengthening the European R&D ecosystem of institutions, funders, infrastructure, innovators and entrepreneurs to scale breakthrough R&I to global markets.

In practice, this might not sound very different from the pillar structure of Horizon Europe and its predecessor. But the expert group’s proposals underline the interconnectedness across these spheres of action, and the need to avoid silos between them.

In many ways, the plan echoes the Draghi report’s support for the European Research Council (ERC) and a reformed European Innovation Council (EIC). Unlike Draghi, it (rightly) insists on the critical role of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions in supporting a new generation of scholars. And it betters the Draghi report’s recommendation to double the funding for R&I to €200 billion (£167 billion). To ensure that all excellent proposals are funded and that Europe can invest in key strategic priorities, the expert group proposes an investment in R&I of €220 billion.

Crucially, the Heitor group insists explicitly on an R&I ecosystem composed of instruments at the national and European levels that relate to, and support, each other. For instance, the expert group is impressed by the success of America’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in funding high-risk, high-reward research.

But it notes that any European response must be supported within FP10, beginning with the EIC. The objective, it says, must be to ensure that the FP10 structure can facilitate this across all actors and priorities, not to create new programmes that ill-suit the existing European R&I ecosystem.

Accordingly, instruments that have served their purpose should be cut, notably the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and the European Innovation Ecosystems. Indeed, even the R&I Missions, a key innovation in Horizon Europe, are identified as requiring serious reform if they are to work effectively.

Perhaps most striking are the expert group’s recommendations on collaborative research to address both competitiveness and societal challenges. There is a focus on R&I in key technologies, but also a clear place for the social sciences and humanities (SSH) to strengthen the well-being and resilience of Europeans. To ensure that instruments are effective, appropriately resourced and nimble, the Heitor group proposes the creation of two councils: a European Technology and Industrial Competitiveness Council (ETIC2) and a European Societal Challenges Council (ESC2).

The idea of creating councils that have cross-sectoral expertise and autonomy, analogous to the ERC, is worth serious consideration. It would preserve the FP’s long-term framing while facilitating the short-term agility to address new scientific and technological frontiers and to adjust quickly to what works in stimulating private investment. And, noting the commission’s dual function as policymaker and research funder, the councils could prove an essential hinge between serving political priorities (such as Europe’s need to compete on AI or deep tech) and advancing on scientific imperatives (such as funding emerging and potentially undervalued research areas), ensuring that researchers have sufficient freedom to address Europe’s societal and technological challenges.

The Heitor report emphasises the importance of international collaboration, calling for a flexible approach that balances the risks of cooperation against the risks of non-collaboration according to research fields. In other words, the report clearly eschews blanket exclusions of systemic rivals from collaboration, recognising our interdependence in addressing key challenges. And it opens the way to strengthen a flexible and equitable approach towards collaborations with the Global South.

While its international approach is highly welcome, it would still have been good to see a stronger endorsement of the benefits of global association with partners that share the EU’s values, including with our close neighbours, the UK and Switzerland.

The Heitor report blows out of the water recent ideas put forward by von der Leyen to smash up FP10 and put its instruments into a single “competitiveness fund”, with harmonised rules of participation. The expert group is clear that a prerequisite for world-leading R&I funding is research excellence. Instruments must be devised with expert input, and implemented by researchers according to timelines and conditions that are optimal for the scientists at whom FP10 is directed.

Heitor’s group has observed that in Horizon Europe, the existing costs of applying (often involving consultancies), selecting and implementing projects have become unacceptable. For FP10, this will require the EU to do a lot of internal work with its budget and legal directorates to ensure that FP10 becomes more flexible and distinct from other instruments, not less. If the commission wants to attract the most competitive researchers to FP10, there is no alternative.

Universities should be under no illusion: the group’s insistence on the need to boost private sector investment in Europe is clear, and this is likely to be a priority for FP10 to which universities must find a response.

Moreover, despite the call for more effective integration of the social sciences and humanities, the report’s overall emphasis on technology and innovation would make SSH integration more challenging in FP10, not less. And the entire international R&I community will have to fight hard to ensure that seamless collaboration through association remains possible.

But the Heitor report has provided an excellent foundation for designing the next FP10. Von der Leyen must put to bed all attempts to develop one-size-fits-all instruments that simply cannot succeed and would divert attention unnecessarily. All actors – the commission, member states and universities – must be bold in strengthening what works, and tackling what doesn’t.

Jan Palmowski is secretary general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities.