Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee – The results and experiences of efforts to close the innovation gap in the EU in the light of Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe programme (exploratory opinion)
Date: 2024-09-18
Institutions: European Economic and Social Committee
Subjects: EU programme, EU research policy, Framework Programme for Research and Development, equal treatment, innovation, project funding, research and development, scientific cooperation, sustainable development








C_202406874EN.000101.fmx.xml












Official Journal of the European Union


EN
C series













C/2024/6874


28.11.2024







Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee


The results and experiences of efforts to close the innovation gap in the EU in the light of Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe programme


(exploratory opinion)

(C/2024/6874)


Rapporteur: 
Georgi STOEV






Referral


Presidency of the European Council, 14.3.2024




Legal basis


Article 304 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union




Section responsible


Single Market, Production and Consumption




Adopted in section


5.9.2024




Adopted at plenary session


18.9.2024




Plenary session No


590




Outcome of vote
(for/against/abstentions)


223/0/0




1.   Conclusions and recommendations









1.1.


The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) believes that the growing research and innovation gap among EU Member States has been a major challenge since the EU’s enlargement in 2004. To close this gap, three major issues need to be addressed in parallel: (1) ensuring access to equitable research and innovation funding in all Member States, (2) providing access to adequate research support infrastructure and professionals, working in management of supporting policies at national level, and (3) tackling co-financing burdens in different Member States. To ensure Europe’s long-term competitiveness, prosperity and global role as a geopolitical actor, efforts will be required at all levels and across all policy areas to close growth, productivity and innovation gaps between the EU and its international partners and competitors.












1.2.


The EESC calls on the European Commission to follow up the teaming for excellence (1) and closing innovation gaps among the Member States, particularly in Widening Countries (2), in the field of research and innovation, as well as in the light of the preparation of the next research framework programme. The impact assessment on knowledge circulation and availability of results across Member States reveals the huge potential of networking through knowledge transfer and exchange of best practices. Additionally, the EU needs to intensify its support for the new EU Member States in order to facilitate effective synergies, to improve their financial capacity and provide administrative assistance and training. Furthermore, the EESC highlights that we need geographically inclusive cooperation in alliances of higher educational institutions and a smarter regulatory framework across the EU.












1.3.


The EESC emphasises the importance of aligning support such as trainings, impact assessment, effective participation of beneficiaries and enabling the participation of SMEs, through their engagement in smaller scale projects, which would also enable and further promote their participation in larger projects as well. The evaluation identified the following areas for improvement: broadening participation; further simplifying and reducing the administrative burden; improving the dissemination, exploitation and deployment of results; supporting the participation of women; and enhancing pathways of synergies with other initiatives at EU, national and regional level.












1.4.


The EESC supports the call for the European Commission to develop a Bureaucracy Reduction Action Plan, in particular by providing support for setting up the interfaces between different funding systems, where barriers still occur due to the mismatches of different approaches. Further efforts to involve companies, trade unions, CSOs and regions should be made in order to help identifying overlapping regulations, to reduce compliance burdens and reporting obligations.












1.5.


The EESC recommends the launch of ‘reality checks’ at European level to identify unnecessary bureaucratic barriers. By taking into account inflation development in the financial thresholds of the SMEs, the EC should extend the administrative exemptions already provided for SMEs and other beneficiaries. It can result in faster, more effective, simplified and transparent procedures for European funding programmes and State aid. Dissemination and exploitation support will help beneficiaries to unlock new sources of funding.












1.6.


The EESC believes that by providing the appropriate framework conditions for investment projects and creating an attractive and consumer-friendly investment environment, all these efforts could ensure competitiveness and strengthen innovation excellence by teaming up and creating linkages among academia, businesses, governments and civil society. This implies a focus on the implementation and simplification, and where necessary – the effectiveness of new regulations.












1.7.


To accelerate the development and modernisation of sustainable production capacities for industrial facilities and for infrastructure projects supported by Horizon Europe, the EESC advocates faster and simpler planning and approval procedures and further expanding on the implementation of open science. Accelerating the development of European digital commons can mobilise more investments, regarding AI and data infrastructures and improve European computing capacities, with effective access for European start-ups.












1.8.


The strengthening of the EU’s technological capabilities will accelerate digitalisation across industries and could increase the opportunities afforded by innovative technologies to ensure that the European regulatory framework unleashes the potential of the Single Market through a unified regulatory space. Such a framework has to preserve European innovation capacities, competitiveness and resilience. Its implementation should generate minimal red tape, it should be timely evaluated and, if necessary, improved.












1.9.


The EESC believes that such an approach can secure the value chain of changing digital technologies at the European level and mitigate the potential hegemony of major digital players, disseminating digital technologies (e.g. AI, big data, cloud, 5G, 6G, robotics) and can improve digital skills within companies and administrations. The EESC recommends to make a better use of the existing ERA Monitoring framework, European Innovation Scoreboard and Regional Innovation Scoreboard, aimed at enhancing the implementation, coordination and monitoring of research and innovation, with the support from social partners and specialised CSOs from the beneficiary countries.




2.   Background and context









2.1.


The EU faces geopolitical tensions as well as competition for access to scarce resources. Questions relating to the definition of a common position vis-à-vis other world powers, in particular the United States and China, are also leading to the necessity of efforts to close the innovation gap among EU Member States.












2.2.


To date, most of the EESC opinions that have looked at geographical balance in the area of the EU’s research and innovation potential have addressed the issue only partially, as it has not been a central topic of the opinions in question. Addressing the issue of balancing the innovation gap in research and innovation among Member States is at the core of the Hungarian Presidency’s request. It stresses that it seems particularly important for the EU to further analyse experiences with and the results of measures and initiatives to narrow the research and innovation gap, in the light of the Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe programmes (see Appendices 1 and 2).












2.3.


Open strategic autonomy and securing a leading role of the EU in developing and deploying critical technologies are among the topics, which the EESC refers to in its previous opinions that tie in with the subject of the current exploratory opinion (see Appendix 1).












2.4.


As the strategic importance of innovation procurement to reinforce European competitiveness is on the radar of Europe’s political leaders, the EESC points out the necessity of improving the EU’s public procurement rules to further integrate innovation with entrepreneurship of men and women in EU Member States and candidate countries. The May 2024 Council conclusions on knowledge valorisation recognise innovation procurement as a key instrument to valorise research and innovation results into societal use and economic value. They encourage all EU Member States to ensure the recognition of innovation procurement in their national and regional innovation strategies.












2.5.


Europe has enormous potential: skills, people, highly innovative companies from small firms to large multinationals, strong research institutions, the capital and the industrial base to succeed and take a leading role in key technologies. With the Single Market, EU Member States have one of the largest and most integrated markets, promoting a highly competitive social market economy. Nevertheless, the EESC stresses that the right policies must be put in place to spur private investment and innovation across the whole of the EU. This means eliminating unnecessary bureaucratic barriers, further developing the regulatory framework in a way that boosts economic momentum and fostering the mobilisation of the necessary public and private investments.




3.   General comments









3.1.


The EESC takes into consideration the fact that, as highlighted by the Hungarian Presidency, the growing research and innovation gap among EU Member States has been a major challenge since the EU’s enlargement, due to a lack of financial capacity and administrative support among project beneficiaries within new EU Member States.












3.2.


The EESC is in favour of training for EU researchers, scientists, students, project and research managers, who are willing to apply for Horizon Europe framework programmes as coordinators or project partners. Professional education and training could help them to use practical tools and techniques for proposal writing (e.g. the enhanced Logical Framework Matrix, budgeting files, Open Science, and background knowledge) and to take the correct approach towards third parties (such as affiliated entities, associated partners, in-kind contributors and subcontractors) and make optimal use of them, and enable participants from EU Member States to submit proposals via the Participant Portal submission system and plan a balanced and eligible estimated budget.












3.3.


Horizon 2020 was the EU’s research and innovation funding programme from 2014 to 2020, with a budget of EUR 75.6 billion, and was then succeeded by Horizon Europe. Horizon Europe started in February 2021 as the European Union’s new seven-year research and innovation funding programme, with an overall budget of EUR 95.5 billion (3).












3.4.


The Horizon dashboard contains data on Horizon 2020 proposals, on Horizon Europe proposals, as well as data on previous Framework Programmes along with projects and participants, which can be filtered by theme, geographical area and organisation profile. According to the available statistics, the programme attracted over one million individual applications from 177 countries (4). Non-EU countries (depending on their status of non-EU associated countries or non associated third countries) were also eligible for funding in specific circumstances, relevant to each category, thus fostering research and innovation cooperation not just in Europe but globally, through funding for transnational R&I projects and collaborations that might not have been possible otherwise.












3.5.


According to the ex-post evaluation report (5), Horizon 2020 funded nearly 35 000 projects involving 40 000 organisations. Estimates suggest that, on top of Horizon 2020’s EUR 75.6 billion budget, an additional EUR 159 billion would have been needed to fund all the high-quality proposals submitted. The current Horizon Europe programme is in the mid-term of its implementation and its impact is yet to be analysed.












3.6.


To address the issue of geographical balance within the European Union, three pivotal challenges will need to be addressed: (1) access to equitable research and innovation funding among Member States, (2) access to adequate research support infrastructure and supporting policies at national level, and (3) tackling co-financing burdens in different Member States. It also seems necessary to assess the opportunities for innovation support for businesses, trade unions and NGOs.




4.   Specific comments









4.1.


The EESC highlights the following topics as crucial elements in assessing a possible geographical imbalance in terms of research and innovation potential, by analysing results and experiences from the Horizon 2020 programme and the ongoing Horizon Europe programme:












4.1.1.


Impact assessment on knowledge circulation and availability of results across Member States should be done to ensure a multiplier effect for scientific and technological advancements in the R&I field across Europe. In the global context, the EU maintains a robust position, demonstrating strong performance in most indicators including in SMEs introducing product and process innovations and environment-related technologies.












4.1.2.


The EU still faces challenges compared to its main global competitors in areas such as intellectual assets, collaboration among innovative SMEs and R&D expenditure in the business sector.












4.1.3.


The reduction of the innovation gap and achieving a better balance in terms of budgets, minimising socioeconomic gaps in budgeting of projects (incl. wages, PM rates, etc.) between new and older Member States in the event of imbalances, set for similar knowledge and skills on different occasions.












4.1.4.


Effective project participation by beneficiaries from all Member States in research and in implementing innovations in the context of the Widening participation programme under Horizon Europe.












4.1.5.


Based on the experience with implementing the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) in the EU Member States, long-term investments could ensure predictability and strengthen Europeans’ innovation potential, along with geographically balanced research infrastructure.












4.2.


The interim evaluation of Horizon 2020 identified a notable gap in venture and growth capital in the EU to scale up innovations. To help bridge this gap, a pilot started to run the European Innovation Council (EIC) during the last three years of Horizon 2020. Early indications show that the EIC pilot had a positive impact on the turnover and staffing levels of its beneficiaries. It also tackled a critical funding gap in high-risk areas where limited alternatives are available at national and regional levels.












4.3.


While Horizon 2020 made strides in bridging the gap between high-quality European research and market innovations, it has not fully closed this long-standing gap. Since its creation, the EIC has primarily funded breakthrough innovations, whereas the Regulation establishing Horizon Europe states that it should finance all types of innovation. Additionally, this instrument has funded projects concentrated mainly in a few countries: 25 % of the funds has gone to France and 11 % to Germany (6), posing the risk of creating innovation gaps within the EU territory. For this reason, the EIC should set the objective of identifying, developing and deploying high-risk innovations of all kinds, including incremental innovations. The trend marked by the EIC in this programming period has led to the orientation of investments towards purely ‘deep tech’ and disruptive innovations and to a de facto absence of support for other important forms of innovation. Furthermore, access must be guaranteed to all kinds of SMEs, enabling collaboration between different sizes and types of companies. It would also be crucial to reduce the complexity of the EIC Accelerator managing system, which now involves countless boards, working groups and digital platforms. Bureaucracy should be reduced and more flexibility should be ensured.












4.4.


It is also crucial to promote the participation of SMEs in prominent larger projects. Industrial participation must be encouraged by promoting: smaller and industry driven consortia; more specific research topics aimed at industrial adoption and market innovations, based on key enabling technologies (KETs). Furthermore, it would be desirable to foster the industrial participation in the Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), by preserving and expanding the scope and funding of the existing PPP, as they play a central role in the implementation of long-term R&I agendas, and thus in the EU’s long-term competitiveness. The insights and key conclusions, derived from this final evaluation of Horizon 2020, are set to play a crucial role not only in shaping the ongoing implementation of Horizon Europe, but also in influencing policy development for future research and innovation initiatives. This will ensure that the lessons learned from Horizon 2020 are effectively integrated into current and future programmes, improving their efficiency, relevance and impact on Europeans.












4.5.


The programmes contribute to the EU’s economic security, by making progress in all pillars of the European Economic Security Strategy: Promote, Partner and Protect. This also includes an effective screening of non-European investments in sensitive sectors and strengthening of Europe’s global partnerships.












4.6.


Collaborative projects should benefit from greater flexibility. Furthermore, a stronger focus should be placed on the impact and concrete results of projects, evaluating project proposals by adopting a result-oriented approach, meaning that during the selection procedures project proposals should be assessed and financed taking into account their potential effective impacts on European competitiveness. To enhance the effectiveness of projects, it is also crucial to conceive the Framework Programme in coherence with EU policies and political objectives looking at all possible synergies with other relevant EU funding programmes, including the RRF and the structural funds. To favour more effective synergies, an increased coordination among the interested European Commission Directorates General (DG RTD, DG GROW, DG REGIO, DG COMP, etc.) and the managing authorities at the different national levels must be achieved.












4.7.


Focusing on the specialisation on very specific topics and introducing internal thematic experts, able to guide potential applicants among the different financing instruments, could help the creation of a network of experts, who would be able to manage interdependence and synergies between programmes and guide potential applicants in the Widening countries. National Contact Points could help the process and financial support for activities including their networking, knowledge exchange and capacity building is needed.






Brussels, 18 September 2024.


The President


of the European Economic and Social Committee

Olivier RÖPKE
               





(1)  
            https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe/widening-participation-and-spreading-excellence_en.

(2)  
            https://rea.ec.europa.eu/funding-and-grants/horizon-europe-widening-participation-and-spreading-excellence_en.

(3)  
            https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe_en.

(4)  
            Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, Ex post evaluation of Horizon 2020, the EU framework programme for research and innovation (COM(2024) 49 final).

(5)  
            COM(2024) 49 final.

(6)  EIC website - latest statistics of the EIC Accelerator: https://eic.ec.europa.eu/index_en.


ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2024/6874/oj
ISSN 1977-091X (electronic edition)