CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: multiannual financial framework

  • Horizon Europe Proposal Won’t Survive at €175bn

    The European Commission’s €175 billion Horizon Europe proposal for 2028–2034 (FP10) is unlikely to survive Council negotiations intact. Every prior Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) research settlement — including the current Horizon Europe programme, whose original €100 billion opening bid was cut to €95.5 billion — has been reduced during Council bargaining, and the Cyprus Council presidency has already tabled a lower figure. Research administrators building multi-year horizon europe proposal pipelines should plan around a materially smaller settlement, not the headline number.

    The Multiannual Financial Framework is the European Union’s seven-year budget ceiling, negotiated unanimously by the Council of the EU and agreed jointly with the European Parliament, within which programmes such as Horizon Europe and its successor, FP10, receive their funding envelope.

    What Does the €175 Billion FP10 Proposal Actually Contain?

    On 17 July 2025, the European Commission published its legislative proposal for FP10 — the tenth EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, running as “Horizon Europe” from 2028 to 2034. The headline figure is €175 billion, roughly double the €95.5 billion allocated to the outgoing 2021–2027 programme.

    That number sits inside a larger structure. According to the Commission’s own published breakdown, FP10’s €175 billion is nested within a €410 billion European Competitiveness Fund (ECF), alongside €234 billion for other schemes. The programme is organised into four pillars: Excellent Science (covering the European Research Council and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions), Competitiveness and Society, Innovation (the European Innovation Council), and a strengthened European Research Area pillar.

    Crucially, €175 billion is a Commission opening bid, not an agreed budget. Interinstitutional negotiation between Parliament, Council and Commission — the trilogue process — has only just begun, and a final MFF agreement is not expected before the end of 2026, ahead of the programme’s planned January 2028 launch.

    What Does MFF Precedent Say About Opening Bids?

    Every MFF research and innovation envelope in living memory has been negotiated down from the Commission’s opening figure. The pattern is consistent enough to build a forecast on.

    Framework programme Commission opening bid Outcome Change
    Horizon Europe (2021–2027) €100 billion (2018 Commission proposal) €95.5 billion final agreed budget, including a €5.4 billion NextGenerationEU top-up -4.5% net; at one point during the July 2020 European Council summit the figure was pushed as low as €80.9 billion before partial restoration
    FP10 / Horizon Europe (2028–2034) €175 billion (July 2025 Commission proposal) Not yet agreed. The Cyprus Council presidency has tabled €167.9 billion (April 2026) -4% on the Council’s opening counter-offer, against a European Parliament push for at least €200 billion

    The direction of travel is identical across both cycles: the Commission proposes a large increase, the European Parliament pushes for more, and the Council — which represents net-contributor member states with competing fiscal priorities — trims the figure during trilogue. FP10 is already following that script four months into formal negotiation, with the Cyprus presidency’s €167.9 billion counter-proposal landing before the Parliament has even finalised its own position.

    Why Is the €175bn Figure Already Shrinking?

    Three structural pressures point the same direction. First, the Council negotiates the overall MFF ceiling as a zero-sum allocation across cohesion, agriculture, defence and competitiveness spending — Horizon Europe/FP10 competes directly against those other headings, not in isolation. Second, several large net-contributor states have historically resisted MFF increases regardless of programme performance; this held even after Horizon Europe’s own interim evaluation found that every euro of EU contribution generates up to €11 in GDP gains by 2045 and that the programme had funded over 15,000 projects worth more than €43 billion as of January 2025.

    Third, FP10’s link to the European Competitiveness Fund creates a new negotiating lever that did not exist in the FP9 round: Council delegations can trade the research envelope against the wider €410 billion ECF total rather than negotiating Horizon Europe’s budget as a standalone line. That structural change makes a cut easier to justify politically, because ministers can present a smaller Horizon Europe figure as reallocation within a still-large competitiveness package rather than as a straightforward science-budget reduction.

    What Does This Mean for Grant-Pipeline Forecasting?

    Institutional research offices, EARMA and ARMA-affiliated grant teams, and funder relations units that are building multi-year FP10 pipeline models on the €175 billion figure are working from a number that has already moved once, before formal Council conclusions have even been reached. Practical implications include:

    • Model a range, not a point estimate. Use €167.9 billion (current Council presidency position) as a working floor and €175 billion as a ceiling until trilogue concludes, rather than planning around the Commission’s original figure.
    • Expect pillar-level reallocation, not uniform cuts. Past MFF rounds have shown cuts land unevenly across pillars; Excellent Science and EIC allocations have historically been better protected than collaborative-project envelopes.
    • Anticipate a later call-schedule start. With final agreement not expected before end-2026 and launch set for January 2028, first-wave FP10 call texts are likely to be finalised later in 2027 than institutions may be assuming.
    • Track the European Parliament position separately from the Council’s. The Parliament’s push for €200 billion is a genuine counterweight in trilogue, so the final figure could land above the Council’s current €167.9 billion offer — plan for a range, not a single downside scenario.

    For institutions coordinating this work through research administration functions, the practical response is to build FP10 revenue forecasts as scenario bands tied to the trilogue calendar, and to revisit those bands each time a Council presidency publishes a new negotiating box.

    Answer-First Q&A

    What Is the Budget for Horizon Europe?

    The outgoing Horizon Europe programme (2021–2027) has a final agreed budget of €95.5 billion, including a €5.4 billion NextGenerationEU top-up. The Commission has proposed €175 billion for its successor, FP10 (2028–2034), but that figure is an opening bid still subject to Council and Parliament negotiation.

    What Is the Budget of the Horizon Europe Pillars?

    FP10 is structured across four pillars: Excellent Science, Competitiveness and Society, Innovation, and the European Research Area. The Commission has not yet published final per-pillar allocations for FP10; these will be set through the same trilogue process determining the overall €175 billion headline figure.

    How Much Does the UK Pay Into Horizon Europe?

    The UK associated to Horizon Europe from January 2024 under a bespoke deal negotiated after the Windsor Framework, paying a contribution linked to UK GDP with a correction mechanism if UK entities draw significantly less funding back than they contribute. Exact annual figures are published periodically by UKRI rather than fixed in the framework regulation itself.

    What Is Horizon Europe Funding?

    Horizon Europe funding supports research and innovation projects across the EU and associated countries, covering frontier science (European Research Council), collaborative research addressing societal challenges, and innovation support (European Innovation Council). FP10 will continue this structure while adding closer integration with the European Competitiveness Fund.

    Conclusion: Plan for Less Than €175bn

    The evidence points one way. FP9’s opening bid fell by 4.5% net — and by nearly a fifth at its lowest negotiating point — before final agreement. FP10’s Council presidency has already tabled a 4% cut just months into formal talks, with a full trilogue still ahead. Research administrators, institutional finance offices and funder-relations teams should treat €175 billion as a ceiling, build FP10 grant-pipeline models around the €167.9–175 billion range the Council and Parliament are currently contesting, and revisit those forecasts as each successive Council presidency publishes its negotiating box through to the expected end-2026 agreement.

  • Horizon Europe Budget: Parliament’s €200bn Push Against FP10’s €175bn Plan

    The European Parliament is demanding a €200 billion Horizon Europe budget for FP10 (2028-2034), €25 billion above the European Commission’s €175 billion proposal, while the Council’s Cypriot presidency has floated a lower €167.9 billion opening figure. With trilogue negotiations running through 2026 alongside the wider EU Multiannual Financial Framework talks, research offices planning Horizon-scale pipelines face a genuine funding-envelope range, not a confirmed number.

    FP10 is the working name for the tenth EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, the successor to Horizon Europe, covering the 2028-2034 spending period. The final horizon europe budget figure will not be settled until the Parliament, Council and Commission conclude trilogue negotiations on the broader Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), a process expected to continue through 2026 and potentially into 2027.

    Where does the FP10 budget standoff stand right now?

    Three EU institutions currently hold three different numbers. The European Commission’s 16 July 2025 proposal set Horizon Europe’s FP10 budget at €175 billion for 2028-2034, nested inside a much larger €410 billion European Competitiveness Fund (ECF) envelope that also covers industrial, digital and defence-related spending. The European Parliament has rejected that figure as too low. The Council of the EU, representing member states who ultimately vote the budget through, has pushed in the opposite direction.

    Institution Proposed FP10 budget (2028-2034) Position, as of mid-2026
    European Commission €175 billion Original proposal, published 16 July 2025
    European Parliament €200 billion Formal negotiating position, led by rapporteur MEP Christian Ehler
    Council of the EU (Cypriot presidency) €167.9 billion Lower counter-figure floated during the presidency’s first-half-2026 term
    Outgoing Horizon Europe (2021-2027, for reference) €95.5 billion Confirmed, includes €5.4bn from NextGenerationEU

    The gap between the Council’s and Parliament’s positions is roughly €32 billion — comparable to the entire current budget of Horizon Europe’s Pillar 3 innovation programme. That spread is the single biggest source of uncertainty for any institution trying to model FP10-era grant income today.

    Why does the European Parliament want €200bn, not €175bn?

    MEPs argue that the Commission’s proposal, while a nominal near-doubling of the outgoing programme, does not keep pace with Europe’s stated ambitions on strategic autonomy, the green transition and competitiveness with the US and China. Parliament’s lead negotiator, MEP Christian Ehler, has described the €200 billion demand as “clear and firm.”

    A second, structural objection sits alongside the topline number. Parliament has raised concerns that folding a large share of Horizon Europe’s Pillar 2 collaborative-research funding into the new European Competitiveness Fund ties scientific excellence too closely to industrial-policy objectives, potentially crowding out curiosity-driven, frontier research in favour of pre-defined competitiveness priorities.

    How would the money split across Horizon Europe’s four pillars?

    Under the Commission’s July 2025 proposal — the baseline both Parliament and Council are negotiating against — the four Horizon Europe pillars would be reshaped as follows:

    • Pillar 1 (frontier research): rises from €25 billion to €44 billion, funding the European Research Council (ERC) and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) — a near-76% increase.
    • Pillar 2 (collaborative research): rises from €53.5 billion to €75.8 billion, split into €68.2 billion for “competitiveness” (managed jointly with the ECF) and €7.6 billion for “society” themes such as migration, democracy and social cohesion.
    • Pillar 3 (innovation): nearly triples, from €13.6 billion to €38.7 billion, mainly funding the European Innovation Council (EIC) for start-up and equity funding.
    • Pillar 4 (research policy): rises from €3.4 billion to €16.2 billion, absorbing research-infrastructure funding moved from Pillar 1 and a boost to the Widening programme, from €3 billion to €5.3 billion.

    Two notable casualties sit outside the headline growth. The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) does not appear by name in the Commission’s proposal, and Horizon Europe’s five current Missions are funded only until 2030 under the plan as published.

    What does the standoff mean for research office planning?

    Research administrators cannot wait for a final MFF signature before adjusting institutional strategy. Grant pipelines that assume Horizon-scale funding continuity into 2028 need contingency planning now, because the range on the table — €167.9 billion to €200 billion — is wide enough to change call volumes, success rates and priority-area weighting regardless of which figure prevails.

    • Model a range, not a point estimate. Build FP10 income projections against both the Council floor and the Parliament ceiling, not just the Commission’s midpoint proposal.
    • Track the Pillar 2/ECF split closely. Because collaborative-research funding is being partly absorbed into the European Competitiveness Fund, eligibility and priority-area alignment for consortium-based grants may shift more than the topline number suggests.
    • Watch the Missions and EIT decisions. Institutions with active Mission-funded projects or EIT Knowledge and Innovation Community involvement should flag the 2030 funding cliff and the EIT’s absence from the current proposal as live risks.
    • Re-check association terms for non-EU partners. The UK, associated to Horizon Europe since January 2024 under its bespoke agreement, has no formal vote in the FP10 trilogue but will need to renegotiate its own contribution rate once a final MFF figure is agreed — a step that historically lags the EU-internal settlement by months.
    • Time major FP10 proposal investment to the 2026 MFF milestones rather than to the Commission’s original proposal date, since work-programme detail cannot be finalised until the budget envelope is fixed.

    For institutions building broader research-administration capacity around Horizon-scale funding cycles, this is also a useful moment to revisit internal grant-pipeline governance — see CASRAI’s research administration resources for related planning frameworks.

    Answer-first Q&A on the FP10 budget fight

    What will happen to Horizon Europe after 2027?

    Horizon Europe’s current 2021-2027 programme will be succeeded by FP10, running 2028-2034. The Commission has proposed a €175 billion FP10 budget, but the final figure depends on trilogue negotiations between the Commission, Parliament and Council, expected to conclude in 2026 as part of the broader Multiannual Financial Framework agreement.

    Has the Horizon Europe budget doubled?

    Nominally, yes: the Commission’s €175 billion FP10 proposal is roughly 84% higher than the outgoing programme’s confirmed €95.5 billion (2021-2027) budget. Whether that increase survives negotiation intact depends on the outcome of the Parliament-Council standoff, where positions currently range from €167.9 billion to €200 billion.

    What is the successor to Horizon Europe?

    FP10 is the working name for Horizon Europe’s successor programme, covering research and innovation funding for 2028-2034. It restructures the current four-pillar model and links a large share of collaborative-research funding to the new European Competitiveness Fund, a broader €410 billion instrument proposed alongside it.

    How much does the UK pay into Horizon Europe?

    The UK has been an associated country to Horizon Europe since January 2024 under a bespoke association agreement, paying a contribution calibrated to its participation level rather than full EU membership rates. Its FP10-era contribution will need fresh negotiation once the EU-internal horizon europe budget figure is finalised.

    Whichever figure the trilogue eventually lands on, the direction of travel is clear: FP10 will be larger than Horizon Europe, more tightly coupled to industrial-competitiveness priorities through the European Competitiveness Fund, and slower to finalise in operational detail than institutions may be assuming. Research offices that build planning ranges now, rather than waiting for a single confirmed number, will be better placed when the 2028 work programmes eventually open.