In their
position paper the combined European Research Universities
(LERU) express fear "that there will be few opportunities for
researchers from this disciplines in H2020, compared with FP7,
particularly in the field of humanities." LERU suggests introducing
creative incentives to reinforce the participation of social
and humanities scientists across all themes."
In the midst of austerity measures and budget cuts the European
Commission prepares a leap forward by earmarking a stunning €80
billion for research and innovation.
The Horizon 2020 proposal is centered around excellence, industry
leadership and addressing societal challenges. For social sciences
and humanities there will no longer be a special programme.
Robert-Jan Smits: "These disciplines should get out of their silo's
and step up their efforts to tackle societal problems. This weekend
I read that in The Netherlands one out of eight people over seventy
years have only one social contact a month and 15% of people over
80 suffer from mental depression. Those are issues they need to
work on."
It is not often that you hear EU Commission officials admit that
they are 'obsessed with controls', but director-general Robert-Jan
Smits (DG Research and Innovation) pleaded guilty during the recent
parliamentary debate on future research and innovation policy of
the EU. Horizon 2020 wants to do it differently:
one type of grant, less rules, less audit obligations and… more
money.
Smits: "We want full support of the European Parliament for this
radical simplification, because we have altogether made rules far
too complex. We have been obsessed by controls and obsessed by
audits, but we have not allowed researchers to do what they want to
do: research." According to Robert-Jan Smits it is the real wish of
the European Commission to move towards a 'trust based approach'.
The question remains: will the European Parliament and the Member
States follow suit.
The Horizon 2020-package is the successor of the European
Framework Programme (FP7). Since it is part of the discussion on
the broader multi annual EU-budget it will be discussed in that
context during the coming months. Smits: "We cannot build the
future of Europe on just austerity measures, we need
growth-enhancing measures. Thus the area of innovation and research
gets a substantial budget increase: €80 billion in total for the
period 2014-2020, that is an increase of 46% compared to the
current programme period."