04 Mar 2021 | News
UK budget offers a few crumbs for research, but no Horizon Europe money
There are tweaks to the talent visa, but science funding ‘notably scarce’, while there’s no mention of how the government will meet the costs of EU science participation
Visa fine-tuning to create radically simplified bureaucracy for high-skilled applications , with quicker processes for entrepreneurs, was a research highlight in the UK’s annual budget on Wednesday.
But science groups are left perplexed by the missing billions of pounds earmarked for participation in the EU’s Horizon Europe research programme.
“Today’s budget does not provide any clarity on the source of funding for association to Horizon Europe, expected to be around £2 billion a year, which may mean significant funds will need to be found from core R&D budgets,” said Tim Bradshaw, chief executive of the Russell Group of the UK’s top research universities.