EU Focuses on Horizon Europe Compliance and Open Science
The European Parliament's REGI committee is meeting this week to discuss reforms for the Horizon Europe research program, focusing on impact maximization and security. Concurrently, OpenAIRE announced a webinar on the program's open science mandates and data management compliance, highlighting the growing administrative demands on researchers.
- Horizon Europe, the EU's research and innovation program from 2021-2027, has a total budget of €95.5 billion. A significant portion, over €53 billion, is allocated to the "Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness" pillar, which includes clusters for Health, Digital, Industry and Space, and Climate, Energy and Mobility. For the subsequent period, 2028-2034, the European Commission has proposed nearly doubling the budget to €175 billion. - The program's security focus aims to balance openness with safeguarding the EU's strategic autonomy and technological leadership. Specific actions related to the Union's strategic assets, interests, or security can be restricted to entities from Member States and select associated countries. This is part of a broader European Economic Security Strategy to protect against risks like technology leakage and foreign interference. - Open Science is a mandatory, cross-cutting principle in Horizon Europe, requiring immediate open access to publications and adherence to FAIR data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). Beneficiaries must create a Data Management Plan (DMP) by the sixth month of their project and are encouraged to use trusted repositories like the EU-supported Zenodo. - Despite a higher success rate for researchers compared to its predecessor, Horizon 2020, the administrative burden has reportedly increased due to the program's complexity. A 2024 European Commission evaluation of lump-sum funding models—an attempt at simplification—estimated administrative cost reductions of 14%–30%. However, a survey and subsequent workshop highlighted ongoing burdens related to reporting, lack of clear guidelines, and inflexible budgets. - Public sector bodies across the EU are mandated by the Web Accessibility Directive to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Level AA standard. This legal requirement ensures that public service websites and apps are perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust for people with disabilities. - GovTech initiatives are expanding across Europe to digitize public services, with half of all GovTech investment deals in 2024 being AI-related. Case studies from Estonia (predictive healthcare models) and Cornwall, UK (£2 million in savings from moving 1.5 million transactions online) demonstrate the impact of digital transformation in the public sector. - The European Commission is actively funding projects to enhance civic participation and government transparency through emerging technologies. One such project, involving Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands, is exploring the use of AI, IoT, and VR to design and assess innovative civic engagement solutions. - To foster digital sovereignty, Germany launched the Sovereign Tech Fund in 2022, a public investment initiative to support the development and maintenance of critical open-source software infrastructure. By late 2023, the fund had supported over 40 open-source projects with a budget that grew to €11.5 million.
