Guild calls for measures to support research in widening countries and close performance gap

The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities has called on EU decision makers to ensure that member states with lower research performance continue to receive support under the next Horizon Europe programme. Extra efforts should be made to close the gap among the least-well performing countries themselves, the Guild says.

In a paper published on 21/05/2026, the Guild highlights the measures that the EU should take as part of the programme designed for “widening” countries, i.e those with a research performance of under 75% of the EU average, and “transition” countries, those at over 75% of the average but which have been in the widening group under the current framework programme (FP9).

Jan Palmowski, secretary-general of the Guild, commented: “It is critical that excellent researchers throughout Europe are invested in FP10, including from lower-performing countries. For this, we need to ensure widening instruments are effective and proportionate, strengthening - and never undermining - the excellence of FP10. And we need measures that recognise effectively that different…