Strategic planning in Horizon Europe

News

On Tuesday, 2nd April 2019an IGLO Open meeting took place – hosted by the Jakob Madsen from the DANRO Office. Theme of the event was “Strategic Planning and the Co-Creation Process in Horizon Europe” and it was delivered by Kurt Vandenberghe – director in Directorate A – Policy development & coordination of DG RTD, who presented the Commission’s plans for the new and imminently upcoming Strategic Planning, and in particular which opportunities there will be for co-creation process of the Horizon Europe framework programme.

With the political agreement on Horizon Europe in place between the co-legislators, the members of the IGLO community, i.e. informal association of Brussels-based non-profit R&D Liaison Offices (PolSCA being one of the members), are awaiting for the next steps to be taken by the EC so to accelerate the preparation of the implementation phase. What has been proposed within HEU Regulations (still to be adopted by the EP on the April 17th 2019) clearly has a great potential, but also requires a significant efforts from European stakeholders to make it the success that it could and should become!

The event started with a summary of the negotiation process, which encompassed 6 trilogues in the past 3 months. Among the most heated issues debated between Member States were widening instruments, including some new measures supporting collaborative links between EU13 and EU15 like targeted matchmaking and “hop-on” scheme. Consensus reached during negotiations allowed to move forward with the European Innovation Council (EIC) and introduction of three new concepts into the programme:

  • Adoption of Strategic Planning based on co-creation principles,
  • Definition of a list of missions areas to be developed further into specific mission topics,
  • Restructuring of European partnerships and adoption of a list of possible institutionalized partnerships.

Strategic planning and co-creation

To make the message clear, the process of strategic planning will mainly guide the implementation of the Pillar II of the programme, i.e. Global Challenges & European Industrial Competitiveness, while Pillar I (Excellence Science) and Pilar III (Innovative Europe) will adopt bottom-up logic, just like under Horizon 2020. Missions and partnerships will definitely be part of the Strategic Plan.

The overall purpose of this exercise is to effectively reach the objectives Horizon Europe and to be more strategic when thinking of the EU-wide investments in R&I. Therefore, EC will utilize the co-creation process engaging a broad spectrum of stakeholders across Europe and beyond, in order to answer questions like: what do we want to achieve, on what do we want to focus, and what difference do we want to make? The Strategic Plan thus shall provide broad and long-term objectives (rather than specific prescriptions), encompassing equally the ideas of openness and more flexibility. Unlike for FP7 and Horizon 2020, the EC does not want to define topics and scientific or technological areas in which to invest, but define directions and have non-prescriptive Work Programmes aimed to achieve these goals. Thus, the outcomes of the strategic planning will not define objectives per clusters but for the entire programme or for areas of interventions.

The first strategic planning will cover the first four years of Horizon Europe, i.e. 2021 – 2024, but may be amended in the course of the four years if needed. However, when it comes to the visible and tangible outcomes of the programme we would like to achieve, we shall rather look into a longer perspective of approx. 10 years, i.e. 5 years of funding > 5 years of building the impact > assessing the results in 2030.

Proposed timeline:

  • June 2019 – first draft of the Strategic Plan to be released by the EC; the consultations will last for three months and will be available globally to ensure openness and transparency; feedback shall be automated and finalised by the end of summer;
  • September 2019 – second draft to be made available to the public and stakeholders, which shall be discussed thoroughly during the European Research and Innovation Days;
  • Q4 of 2019 – a third version of the Strategic Plan will be prepared by the EC officials and published on-line in order to gather feedback from umbrella organisations only, so to ensure that the common interests are addressed;
  • The final documents will have to be validated already by the new European Commission at the end of the year and will serve as a basis for the Work Programmes to be developed in 2020. However, the early preparations of the WPs will start soon with the participation of shadow Programme Committee.

The EU R&I Days will take place in Brussels on 24, 25 and 26 of September at the KANAL – Centre Pompidou. The event will bring together Europe’s best and brightest researchers, scientists, innovators and policy makers to debate and shape the future research and innovation landscape under Horizon Europe. The EC foresees at least 1.000 participants and wants the event to be a real co-creation exercise on the spot! #RiDaysEU will boast a mix of working sessions, discussion workshops, exhibitions etc. with the overarching aim to define the objectives for EU R&I, but also bring visibility on Horizon Europe across public with a motto of “Everyone is invited”.

The registrations are not open yet but you can subscribe to receive update at this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/events/upcoming-events/european-research-and-innovation-days_en


Missions in the Horizon Europe

Missions will be high-ambition, high-profile initiatives which will have a transformative impact for the challenges which European citizens face. As such the missions will be defined broadly -at the level of society, the economy, and the environment. Missions will require the development of a systemic approach to a challenge and the identification of a well-defined end-point, fixed in time against which success can be measured.

Mission boards will play a key role throughout the life of the mission and will be launched once the Horizon Europe political agreement is signed off by the EP and the Councilas soon as there is clarity on the mission areas listed in the Annex currently of the Specific Programme, i.e.:

  1. Adaptation to climate change, including societal transformation
  2. Cancer
  3. Healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters
  4. Climate-neutral and smart cities
  5. Soil health and food

The boards – each gathering up to 15 persons – will be created from a pool of names following a call for an Expression of Interest (EoI). The experts which will be selected must bring a strategic input, a visions for the future, combined with a deep commitment to the success of the mission and not only a solid knowledge of the state of the art in a certain domain. Members of mission boards would be appointed in their personal capacity, while membership of a mission board would be for a fixed term up to a maximum of 5 years and renewable once. The EC hopes to have well known and recognisable people as members of mission boards, especially as Chairs of boards. Ideally, mission board shall cover the following:

  • academia and research organisations, including researchers and managers
  • innovation and business relevant to the mission area
  • and key stakeholders, e.g.:
    • end-users, e.g. public sector, patient groups, citizens associations;
    • international agencies, e.g. the UN to ensure alignment to SDGs;
    • European social partner organisations and civil society organisations e.g. NGOs
    • foundations and the financial sector;
    • communications sector, related to the mission area.

The first meetings of the missions boards will take place during the European R&I Days at the KANAL in September 2019. The boards will be asked to define the concrete missions, their objectives and the time scale. As missions will be included in the Strategic Plan (supposed to be ready in the end of the year), only a very few number of specific missions will be decided initially.

As Kurt Vandenberghe made clear during the IGLO Open Meeting – missions will not only be funding instruments, but will be designed and implemented as guidelines for other programmes (EU programmes, national and regional programmes, etc.) to deliver on the missions goals. Addressing missions may involve multiple types of intervention in addition to the research and innovation, with a Europe-wide or possibly global approach, of which the EU would be in the vanguard.

Partnerships

A list of proposed partnerships (institutionalised, co-funded and co-programmed) shall be presented during the shadow Programme Committee at the beginning of May. Member States will have one month to react, so that a first assessment of the results might be presented during the second shadow Programme Committee in early June 2019. Following this, the impact assessment for the future institutionalised partnerships will start.

All European Partnerships will be included in the process of strategic planning to highlight the link with the other objectives of the Horizon Europe programme. Therefore, European R&I Days at the KANAL in September 2019 will also be a chance for various stakeholders to engage and interfere within a co-creation process aiming at setting up objectives for European partnerships.

Summary of the event

At the closing of the event Jakob Madsen concluded that “Our task as IGLO Network is now to follow up and be proactive in the phase leading up to Horizon Europe”. The very same could be signaled far across the Europe, so that all parties interested in the implementation of the programme will have a chance to participate in its co-creation process. That was indeed a take-home message of Mr Vandenberghe.


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