EU sets research and innovation priorities for a sustainable future

The European Commission has adopted the first strategic plan for Horizon Europe, the new EU research and innovation programme worth €95.5 billion in current prices. The strategic plan is a novelty in Horizon Europe and sets the strategic orientations for the targeting of investments in the programme’s first four years. It ensures that EU research and innovation actions contribute to EU priorities, including a climate-neutral and green Europe, a Europe fit for the digital age, and an economy that works for people.

The strategic plan also identifies the European co-funded and co-programmed partnerships and the EU missions to be supported though Horizon Europe. The partnerships will cover critical areas such as energy, transport, biodiversity, health, food and circularity, and will complement the ten Institutionalised European Partnerships  proposed by the Commission in February. EU missions will address global challenges that affect our daily lives by setting ambitious and inspirational but achievable goals like fighting cancer, adapting to climate change, protecting our oceans, making cities greener and ensuring soil health and food. Employing a large portfolio of instruments across diverse disciplines and policy areas, the EU missions will tackle complex issues through research projects, policy measures or even legislative initiatives.  

The plan’s orientations also address a number of horizontal issues, such as gender. The integration of the gender dimension will be a requirement by default in research and innovation content across the whole programme, unless it is specified that sex or gender may not be relevant for the topic at stake.

Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President for a Europe fit for the Digital Age, said: “This Plan provides a frame for top quality, excellence-based research and innovation to be delivered with the Horizon Europe Work Programme. With this strategic orientation we ensure that research and innovation investments can contribute to a recovery process based on the twin green and digital transition, resilience and open strategic autonomy.”