A chara, – Pavel Marianski (Letters, September 12th) is disappointed that the UK has been permitted to rejoin the EU’s Horizon science funding programme. The UK was only allowed, and rightly so, to enter into negotiations with the European Commission to join the Horizon Europe programme after the political issue with Northern Ireland was resolved and the Windsor Agreement concluded.
This is globally the largest collaborative research and innovation programme involving the 27 member states and another 17 associated countries, including Ukraine. The UK joins the programme as a “third country” and will pay for the privilege.
By the way, its terms of entry are less favourable than those of other countries, including New Zealand and Israel.
The UK and Europe have benefited significantly from previous similar programmes. For example, in the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine that built on 20 years of research, the largest funder was the European Commission at 34 per cent of the research and development costs for the underlying technology.
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It is really a welcome development to have the UK research community now able to collaborate with their European counterparts in a programme with a budget of over €95 billion. This is good for Europe and the UK and can only strengthen the quality of European research and innovation capacity. – Yours, etc,
CONOR O’CARROLL,
Donnybrook,
Dublin 4.