The University of Edinburgh was established in 1583. “We survived the Napoleonic wars and we will survive Brexit”, jokes Jonathan Seckl, professor of medicine and head of research at the establishment. However, he does not hide the immense relief he felt on discovering the details of the agreement between London and Brussels on post-Brexit relations, signed on December 24. After years of doubt, research is one of the few areas where the status quo won. The United Kingdom remains in Horizon Europe, the main European funding program, endowed with 95 billion euros from 2021 to 2027.
“This is great news for our colleagues, great news for research and great news for the world”, says Mr Seckl. Her university received 238 million euros in European funds from 2014 to 2020, for 370 projects, which places it fifth in its country. This money has notably made it possible to participate in studies on the North Atlantic seabed or to use artificial intelligence in the fight against cancer.
This sigh of relief is shared by the entire UK research community. Like sixteen other nations, including Switzerland and Israel, the country will become an associate member of Horizon Europe. It also remains in the Copernicus project, a constellation of satellites for studying the planet and the climate, as well as in ITER, a research project on nuclear fusion, located in Cadarache (Bouches-du-Rhône).
Keep your place in the networks
“We worked for years to achieve this, we are very happy”, confirms Catherine Guinard, of the Wellcome Trust, a major British association which co-finances numerous research projects in the field of health, often in partnership with European funds. In addition to the financial aspect, she underlined the importance of keeping British universities within European networks. “A lot of projects are done within Horizon Europe and it would have been much more difficult to maintain the collaboration without being part of it. ”
The UK will not, however, be part of a start-up fund sub-program. He will also not have access to the secure signal of Galileo, the geolocation satellite network (competitor of GPS), reserved for defense uses.
This partnership agreement in the field of science was far from being acquired in advance. Between the vote to leave the European Union in June 2016 and the signing of the agreement on Christmas Eve, the British government was deliberately vague on its intentions. ” We had a narrow escape “, said in a video posted online Mike Galsworthy, the founder of the anti-Brexit lobby Scientists for EU (“scientists for the EU”).
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