EUROPEAN COUNCIL/MFF : HORIZON 2020 EXPECTED TO LOSE 10 BN EURO.

• Position: Brief article

The budget adopted by the European Council for the Horizon 2020 research and innovation framework programme is expected to amount to 70.96 billion, announced Michael Jennings, spokesman for Research Commissioner Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, the day after Europe's leaders came to agreement on the Union's financial framework 2014-2020. The Council therefore slashed by 12% the budget of 80 billion initially proposed by the Commission, despite the exceptionally active lobbying of recent weeks by universities and major European technology firms.

The figure could be better but it nevertheless represents a huge leap compared with the current seventh R&D framework programme, said Jennings. The latter programme's budget is admittedly considerably lower at 55 billion, but Horizon 2020 is meant to be a broader programme, since the executive includes in it the activities to be carried out by the new European Institute of Innovation and...