Position paper on the next Horizon Europe Strategic Plan 2025-2027

Position paper on the next Horizon Europe Strategic Plan 2025-2027

Horizon Europe is a key instrument for the EU to strengthen the scientific and technological base, drive digital transformation, tackle climate change and to boost competitiveness and sustainable growth. Drafting of the strategic plan of Horizon Europe for the period of 2025-2027 is already starting and CSC has formulated a position paper with our key recommendations.

In short, CSC recommends that the next Horizon Europe Strategic Plan:

  • recognises that the foundation for EU’s open strategic autonomy is research excellence, collaboration, world-class innovation ecosystems, as well as competitive education and training systems.

  • boosts the interaction between ERA and the European Education Area (EEA) to allow for coordinated education and research strategies, policies and investments.

  • promotes enhanced international partnerships with like-minded actors working for solutions to shared global challenges.

  • reduces the fragmentation of the research infrastructure landscape by developing a comprehensive and sustainable ecosystem of interoperable, federated digital infrastructures, where high-performance computing, cloud, quantum, artificial intelligence, data management and network connectivity work in convergence.

  • recognises European research infrastructures as a strategic asset that requires sustainable funding models and scalability according to needs of research and society.

  • supports convergence between the two initiatives European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), to ensure that ambitious, large-scale research missions are supported by the large-scale research infrastructures that they are in need of.

  • takes clear responsibility of the climate impact of research itself, by making comprehensive climate criteria and full climate impact assessment an integral part of Horizon Europe.

A blog on the topic can be found here

Read the whole position paper here