The UK government’s announcement that it had rejoined the European Union’s Horizon Europe science funding programme was cause for celebration among researchers in Britain and across Europe. But what will the terms of the deal – and the long time the UK was out of the programme – mean for those researchers and the country more generally?

The UK had been a full member of the EU’s flagship research and innovation programme until the country formally left the bloc in 2020. Following lengthy negotiations, the UK has now joined Horizon as an associate member – an arrangement open to non-EU countries.

Horizon Europe is the world’s largest multilateral research funding pot. It runs from 2020 to 2027 and has a budget of €95.5 billion (£82 billion).

Researchers based in EU member states and other “associated” countries can apply for funding on a competitive basis to support prestigious fellowships – monetary awards to support individual researchers’ careers – and research collaborations between a number of researchers across different universities and often different countries.

Under the new deal, the UK will once again be able to influence how Horizon Europe is governed and to influence its successor programme. The priority now must be for UK research institutions to maximise UK participation rates, which have been negatively impacted by the prolonged uncertainty.

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