What does this mean? 

UK-based researchers will be able to participate in all parts of Horizon Europe. In practice, this means that all UK-based researchers will be able to apply for and receive EU funding from these programmes in the same way as they could when the UK was still a member state. 

UK researchers can still lead on projects under Horizon Europe, just like previous programmes, and UK officials and experts can still attend programme committees and working groups, albeit as observers rather than full participants. The practical impact of the latter is expected to be minimal as these groups tend to operate on a consensus basis and very rarely take formal votes. UK recipients will be subject to the same auditing and anti-fraud checks as they were as a member state.  

The schemes that this applies to include:

• All pillars of Horizon Europe (including the European Research Council and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions), as well as:
  • Joint Research Centre activities
  • Article 185 and 187 partnerships
  • The European Institute of Innovation and Technology
  • The European Research Infrastructures Consortium 12 January 2020
  • The European Research Area Committee.
• Euratom Research and Training Programme
• European Joint Undertaking for ITER (‘F4E’) and the Development of Fusion Energy
• Copernicus
• COST Programme

Following the recent announcement that the UK will not be participating in the ERASMUS+ programme, the Government will be introducing a new scheme (named after Alan Turing) to support students who plan to study or work abroad. Further information will be circulated as and when it is published.  

Detailed briefing on Horizon Europe

For more detailed information, Universities UK International has provided a full briefing on the changes to Horizon Europe which can be found here.