The European Parliament is gearing up for negotiations with member states on the 2024 budget, which includes funds pertaining to research and innovation. While the Council usually advocates for budget cuts, on 9 October, the BUDG committee of the Parliament voted in favour of increased spending for basic health and climate research through Horizon Europe. They called for an extra 140 million euros to be added to the overall 12.8 billion euros research budget the European Commission proposed in July for next year.

The ambitious increase the Parliament pushes for is in line with researchers' demands, as the community is faced with the appalling observation that 71% of research proposals made under Horizon Europe cannot be funded for lack of budget, a figure that barely went down since the previous framework programme, Horizon 2020, which saw 74% of unfunded proposals. However, the lawmakers' proposition is at odds with the member states', who, to the contrary, have proposed to slash the research programme’s budget by 116 million euros during a Council meeting in July.

The Parliament’s plenary is now expected to vote on the BUDG Committee draft position during the 16-19 October plenary before interinstitutional negotiations begin, with the objective to reach an agreement by 13 November, to allow adoption before 2024.

But lawmakers are starting to look beyond the yearly budget. Indeed, even if Horizon Europe is set to run until 2027, the next seven-year research and innovation framework programme is already in many decision-makers' minds. With massive challenges ahead, such as the digital and green transitions, as well as achieving strategic autonomy, prominent figures of the European Parliament active on R&I files have started calling for an increased budget compared to the present programme. Some of them even advocated for 200 billion euros of funding – about double Horizon Europe’s current seven-year budget, set at 95.5 billion euros.

However, the Commission, which will not be able to tap into post-Covid recovery funds to boost the budget like in 2021, and has regularly emphasised new priorities such as the New European Bauhaus, the Chips Act, or the Strategic Energy Technology Plan (STEP), is expected to suggest a much lower number. Its official proposal on the matter should be made public by spring 2025, after a high-level expert group leads the process.