Following a meeting with the European Commission, UKRO would like to share with ELOs the institution’s plans for the next Horizon Europe Work Programme, which will be different from the ones published so far.
Political background
2024 will be an important year for the European Union, as it will be the year of the next European Parliament elections. Every five years EU citizens choose who represents them in the European Parliament and the next opportunity to do so will be between 6 and 9 June 2024. More than 700 Members of European Parliament will be directly elected to represent EU citizens until 2029.
Following the elections, the Parliament will vote to elect the new head of the European Commission, and eventually to approve the full College of Commissioners – one from each EU Member State. The new Commission is expected to be in place by November 2024 and will present its political priorities for the next five years shortly afterwards.
Separately from this process, the Commission is currently drafting the next Horizon Europe Strategic Plan for the period 2025-27. Like the current Strategic Plan – covering the first four years of the programme – it will define the key strategic orientations for the last years of Horizon Europe, which will eventually be translated into the next Work Programmes with calls for proposals. The second Strategic Plan is expected to be published in early 2024.
Impact on the main Horizon Europe Work Programme for 2025
As the Work Programmes of Horizon Europe and other centrally-managed EU funding programmes address the political priorities of the European Commission, the 2025 Work Programme of Horizon Europe can only be published once the new College of Commissioners is in place, although it will still be developed primarily during 2024.
UKRO understands that the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) of the Europe Commission is currently planning for the next Work Programme to be an annual one (in contrast to the biannual Work Programmes published so far), covering 2025 only, and for it to be a bridge between the current Work Programme (2023-24) and the future one (2026-27), which will reflect the priorities of the new College.
We also understand that, in early 2024, the Commission is planning to publish an amendment to the main 2023-24 Work Programme, which will include some of the 2025 funding opportunities in those parts of Horizon Europe that do not address the political priorities of the Commission. This could include the MSCA, Research Infrastructures and possibly also the Widening element of the programme and would ensure that the well-established annual calls that are not dependent on the political priorities of the EU could be launched quickly.
In addition to this, we understand that the planned amendment will include the 2024 calls for proposals under the Missions Work Programme part. The initial five Missions of Horizon Europe had to be evaluated earlier this year and the 2024 calls for proposals are currently being drafted.
The remainder of the fully-fledged main Work Programme for 2025 (addressing EU political priorities), which does not include the ERC or the EIC, will be developed during 2024 and published in early 2025.
UKRO will keep subscribers informed about any developments in this area via the UKRO Portal.