EU funding for research and innovation
The European Union is one of the world's leading regions for Research and Innovation. With just 7% of the world's population, the EU accounts for 24% of world expenditure on research, 32% of high-impact publications and 32% of patent applications*.
Horizon 2020 (H2020) is the largest of the EU's Research and Innovation funding programmes, with nearly €80 billion being made available between 2014 and 2020. The programme's three pillars of "Excellent Science", "Industrial Leadership" and "Societal Challenges" cover topics ranging from particle physics and clean energy to sustainable agriculture and social change.
H2020 aims to create a genuine single market for knowledge, research and innovation across countries and organisations. Small businesses, large corporates, universities and researchers, from across the EU and beyond, are able to propose and work together on collaborative projects. A project may typically last three years, and involve between five and ten partner organisations.
Several thousand projects have started since 2014 and the complete list, including total costs and participants, is available from the Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS)**. The top four universities benefitting from H2020 finding are all in the UK: University College London, Cambridge, Imperial College London and Oxford between them have received €179 million from the programme so far***. UK business is also strongly represented, since many large and smaller companies take part, and usually all of their project costs are paid by H2020. Crucially, the projects also help to build working relationships across the EU, and these in turn often lead to further work and knowledge sharing, which benefits all.