Press Release : Midterm Review Position Paper

Initiative for Science in Europe (ISE) makes recommendations to improve the functioning and impact of Horizon Europe and launches some ideas for the future

1. Shelter Pillar 1 actions: ERC and MSCA from any budget cuts. Fix a major shortcoming of Pillar 2 by increasing academic collaborative research and the role of Academic partners.
2. Facilitate interdisciplinary research by removing unnecessary limitations and improving their assessment.
3. Live up to Societal and Global Challenges through a clarification and simplification of the Clusters and Missions, and a broader role of academic partners.
4. Widen participation and support excellence wherever it is by 1° making the nine existing instruments more visible, easier to use, and more effective; 2° facilitate access to other actions.
5. Increase trust, simplify and stabilise the rules of participation for beneficiaries, improve the accessibility of actions for researchers.
6. Distinguish goals from pathways: define the goals but leave choice of the routes to reach them free for the researchers to find solutions and ways to innovation.
7. Stimulate a higher engagement in research by Member States; the Commission must support the co-construction and partnerships steered by the ERAC and the ERA Forum for Transition.
8. Deploy more efforts to improve the consultation of Stakeholders, crucial to the quality and impact of their engagement.
9. To have a positive impact, reform of Research Assessment and transition to Open Science must be driven by the researchers themselves. The EU’s push for reform, and the choice of a voluntary coalition are very positive.
10. Upgrade the situation of Early Career Researchers through a joint undertaking between the Commission and Member States, with the involvement of public and private employers to achieve the goal of making Europe the most advanced knowledge-based society.
11. Make good use of science diplomacy, an important stake of Europe’s soft power: scientific outcomes, circulation of researchers, principles of academic freedom.
12. Protect academic freedom. The growing distrust towards science, the increasing number of scientists who have been threatened, the attempts to restrict the freedom of research in the name of security or of ideological prejudice are a major threat to science and to researchers.

Strasbourg, March 3, 2023

Link to the full report

ISE  carries the voice of researchers to build a stronger and fairer European Research Area