The European Union has had some success leveling the playing field for countries that struggle to attract research funding, but certain countries still lag behind, according to an EU auditing body’s assessment. The “widening measures” aimed at giving stragglers a leg up can only go so far without matching efforts from those countries, says the report from the European Court of Auditors, which examines the finances and management of EU funds.
The report, released today, found that although the European Union’s widening programs were helpful, there were “weaknesses in implementation,” says Ivana Maletić, an auditor at the court and the report’s lead author. Some countries did not take advantage of a program to reshape national research policies and tighten links between science and business, she says. Many had difficulty attracting the top international researchers some grants were meant to support. And many of the projects initiated under the programs face difficulties securing long-term funding from national agencies or industry.
Just four countries—Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom—together bagged half of the €53 billion in research funding doled out by the European Union between 2007 and 2013. Many other countries, even comparatively large ones such as Poland and Romania, each managed to win less than 1% of the funding on offer. So for Horizon 2020, the €76.4 billion funding program that ran between 2014 and 2020, the European Union set aside 1.2% for “widening” programs in 15 countries with below-average numbers of highly cited research papers, top institutions, and grant funding. The goal was to spur lagging countries to build connections to research institutes elsewhere in the European Union, attract top researchers with competitive salaries, and improve their national research policies. The programs mirror efforts by the U.S. National Science Foundation to boost the geographic diversity of its awardees through set-asides for certain states.
The European programs “are still new, and projects are still ongoing,” Maletić says. But one early sign of modest success is that the “widening” countries won 7.2% of the overall funds in Horizon 2020, she says, up from 5.5% during its 7-year predecessor.
That success was not evenly distributed. Cyprus more than doubled its share of EU research funds, and Estonia nearly doubled its share. But Croatia saw no increase at all, and Hungary’s share fell by 14%. The widening countries that secured more EU research grants overall also did better at securing funding for widening projects.
The inequity in outcomes is unsurprising because the measures are “one size fits all,” says Kristin Kraav, widening representative at the Estonian Research Council. The countries involved vary in size and the obstacles they face, she says, “so it’s not possible for the measures … to solve everybody’s problems.” Estonia, for instance, won one-quarter of the widening funding for attracting top researchers, but just 4% of the money available to “team” a local research institute with prominent institutes elsewhere. Teaming projects required Estonia to secure matching funds from government or industry, which is easier for larger countries to achieve, Kraav says.
Common to countries that were less successful in winning widening funding is “a real lack of follow-through” from their political leadership, says Jan Palmowski, secretary general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities. They didn’t consistently bring matching funding to the table and in some cases didn’t take up the offer of support for reshaping their own national research policies. “This cannot just be the responsibility of the EU,” Palmowski says. “It’s really up to member states … to use [these tools] effectively.”
Horizon Europe, the current €95.5 billion funding package that will run until 2027, has set aside an even bigger share of its budget—3.1%—for widening measures. The list of widening countries has changed slightly, with Greece replacing Luxembourg. And there are new programs, with a greater focus on tightening links between academia, business, and government, Maletić says.
Ultimately, Kraav says, success would mean “widening measures are no longer needed.” But that is still a way off. Estonia and some other countries may have improved their standing over the past decade, she says, but “we are still not competing on an equal level in all parts of Horizon Europe.”
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Some countries still struggle to win EU funding despite programs to give them a leg up - Science
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