When will the "Phoney War" over the EU's future research programmes end? By Simon Taylor
You will sometimes hear Brits of a certain age talk about the “Phoney War”. This is a reference to the period between Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 and May 1940, when British troops faced the Wehrmacht and were forced to retreat across the Channel.
Please forgive the World War reference, but it seems like a very apt way to describe the current state of negotiations on the EU
European Union
’s medium-term budget for 2028-2036, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF
Multiannual financial framework
). And it seems particularly fitting for the talks on the next Horizon Europe (HE) framework programme (FP10
The next Framework Programme for Research, currently referred to as FP10
).
EU ministers responsible for research met on 27/02/2026 to take stock of negotiations on the European Commission’s proposal for Horizon Europe. They made more or less the same remarks during the Council debate a few weeks ago as they had made two months earlier at their previous Council meeting.
Speaking at the Research Council in Brussels, Nicodemos Damianou, Cyprus' deputy research minister, said that his colleagues had raised the connection between Horizon Europe and the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF
European Competitiveness Fund
), as well as issues of governance and priority setting for the research programme in the meeting. He added that there had been a "strong call" by ministers to discuss widening measures, i.e. the money available to help countries with a lower research performance catch up with their peers.
This analysis is written by Simon Taylor, editor in chief of News Tank Academic.
Months pass by but the questions remain the same
That was February. Compare what ministers said after their December Council meeting. A large number of ministers called for guarantees that they would have significant influence over Horizon Europe’s strategic priorities. Portugal's State Secretary for Research, Helena Canhão, said there should be a "stronger role for member states in priority setting".
On widening, ministers were divided over how quickly the issue should be addressed, depending on their research performance and their eligibility for funding to catch up. Canhão said that a “more thorough discussion” was needed on the topic, a view supported by Slovenia’s Igor Papić. The Hungarian minister János Csák said that widening measures should remain part of the next Horizon Europe programme. Czechia’s representative, Štěpán Černý, said that the issue of widening should be “unbracketed”, i.e., that it should be discussed before final agreement on the size of the overall MFF.
So, two months after the December Council, member states are still asking the Commission questions about how FP10 (the latest in a line of research programmes going back to 1984) will work together with the new European Competitiveness Fund. There are concerns that the research priorities of FP10 will be determined by the needs of industry and business in the drive for greater EU competitiveness.
Zaharieva says that research funding is "safe from business and industry"
Ekaterina Zaharieva, the European Commissioner for Research, Start-ups and Innovation, acknowledged these fears within the research community. Reacting to a letter sent in February by seven university and research associations calling for greater clarity on FP10 and the ECF, she sought to reassure scientists and member states that funding for basic research was safe under the Commission's proposals.
"There are worries from scientists but also from member states that if there is money for industry, it will somehow absorb money for research and innovation. My answer to both member states and scientists is that it [Horizon Europe] is a separate regulation and the money for Horizon Europe is ringfenced."
Of course, research scientists and member states remember the Commission’s original plan to merge Horizon Europe into the ECF, a scheme that was only defeated by universities mobilising to convince European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to keep Horizon as a separate project. No wonder people are nervous.
Von der Leyen keeps on saying how important it is for the negotiations on the MFF to be settled by the end of this year so that all the work needed for programmes to be in place for the start of the next budgeting period in 2028 is completed.
Research scientists and member states' experts are growing increasingly nervous about how Horizon and the ECF will fit together.
Christian Ehler, the German centre-right MEP Member(s) of the European Parliament who is drafting Parliament’s opinion on the Commission’s proposal for the ECF, has said that the Commission “has a lot of work to do” filling in the gaps. Ehler is saying what many people in the EU research community are thinking.
Some in the research community are looking for answers to these increasingly pressing questions to the European Commission's department for the internal market, DG Directorate-General GROW (Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs Small and medium-sized enterprises ) and the office of the Commissioner in charge, Stéphane Séjourné. Some thing that the responsibility lies at the heart of the Commission’s administration, the secretariat-general.
In addition, some member states are pushing for the Council to start talking about figures and end the decision to "bracket" discussions on money. This is because important political discussions about how much money there will be for widening measures and the criteria for who gets it cannot take place without an idea of the total allocation.
In short, many in the sector increasingly believe that it is time for the “Phoney War” over EU research policy to end. While it continues, they point out, the gap between the EU’s potential for innovation and the performance of its rivals in the US and China only grows bigger.
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