Horizon deal: Brexit sellout or sensible pragmatism?

Britain’s scientific community has hailed the new deal giving it access to the world’s largest research collaboration programme, the EU Horizon scheme.

After two and half years of being excluded from funding, UK scientists can, from today, once again apply for grants from Europe’s flagship £85bn programme.

This follows last night’s phone call between Rishi Sunak and European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen in which they sealed a long-awaited deal to allow Britain to rejoin Horizon as a paying associate member. This is the same status currently enjoyed by the likes of Norway, New Zealand, Israel and Ukraine.

Among the most robust Brexiteers there is concern that the deal ties the UK into EU rules. The fear is that Horizon will align with EU defence programmes, bringing British research under an EU umbrella.

But Paul Nurse, director of the Francis Crick Institute, insists that rejoining a scheme unrivalled in its scope for cross-border collaboration “is an essential step in re-building and strengthening the UK’s global scientific standing.” 

Scientists overwhelmingly label the deal a win-win for everyone since Horizon has been instrumental in delivering medical breakthroughs and new technologies for over 30 years. According to Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, “nearly three-quarters of respondents to our survey of cancer researchers cited funding from the EU as important for their work.”

The European Commission has confirmed that Britain will contribute around £2.6bn on average a year to Horizon and Copernicus, the EU’s satellite system, starting from January 2024. And Sunak insists his “bespoke” deal has secured a major win on compensation for the two years in which British researchers were frozen out of the programme. Though Britain could hardly be expected to pay for years it wasn’t a member.

Ministers are said to have been previously concerned that the scheme was overly bureaucratic and that it failed to provide good value for money. Scientists appear pretty much unanimous in their support for Horizon. They are dismissive of the idea a proposed “plan B” British-led funding scheme, dubbed Pioneer, would be a viable replacement.

Ignoring this overwhelming consensus would have been politically difficult for Sunak, playing right into the hands of the leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, who had committed to rejoining Horizon. 

Of course, this isn’t the first time a post-Brexit PM has negotiated an associate Horizon membership. Under Boris Johnson’s premiership in December 2020, Lord Frost attempted to do the same but the EU refused to co-operate due to “questions tied to the protocol on Northern Ireland”.

So Sunak’s Windsor Framework has paved the way for this new political win. Indeed, Horizon negotiations only commenced once the new EU-UK agreement over Northern Ireland had been sealed. 

Today’s deal provides further evidence that EU-UK tensions are thawing. It’s a sign of “a climate of restored trust,” says Natalie Loiseau, a French MEP and one of the leaders of the UK-EU parliamentary partnership assembly. 

It will also act as a personal boost for Rishi Sunak, allowing him to engage in some chummy interactions with VDL on the sidelines of the G7 next week, and he will no doubt uphold it as evidence that he is fulfilling his pledge to make Britain a science and technology “superpower.”

But some Brexiteers will continue to see the deal and thawing relations as a bad thing.

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