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UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

theguardian.com

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Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#261

Post by chimprich »

sievebrain wrote: post #109
djaychela wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"More than enough money" (and certainly the figures I've seen people bandying about) assumes that the cost of accessing the EU market (which I think we will have to pay) would be zero. I think it will be a significant proportion of the amount we were paying (net) to the EU, and in addition there will be other costs which people are just starting to cotton onto as well. The main thing is that at the moment, we really…

WTO max tariffs (worst case scenario) are 4%. But the currency has weaked by about 8%. So even if max tariffs are applied tomorrow, UK goods are still cheaper to buy in the EU than before! In practice, if the EU doesn't strike a deal with the UK (which it won't) then I think it will suffer more exits. Because the EU has spent years trying to sign free trade deals with America, Canada and other places. If it turns aro…

UK goods may be cheaper to buy than before, but there's many problems with this.

First, we're all significantly poorer. As individuals. Fuel, goods, foreign travel, etc. are all significantly more expensive.

Second, what goods? We don't actually export much stuff so the benefits of being able to sell stuff cheaper isn't terribly attractive. Even if this did stimulate e.g. UK manufacturing in the long term, we're starting from a poor position and...

Third, the stuff we do sell tends to be services or of the value-added variety -- all of which depends on imports, so much of any extra money we make will be swallowed up by increased costs.

Fourth, even if we did sell more stuff, the money we made from it would be worth 8% less.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#262

Post by chimprich »

sievebrain wrote: post #234
teh wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E.g. "in practice, if the EU doesn't strike a deal with the UK (which it won't) then I think it will suffer more exits." That is quite a bold statement that needs a lot of statements from people who can make these decisions to back it up. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

Is it an extraordinary claim? The people who run the Commission have been saying explicitly they don't even want to start talking about a free trade deal with the UK until after the UK is fully out. There's no reason for this, they could easily run the talks in parallel, but they have no desire to do so. Now consider the extreme difficulty the EU faces in signing deals even when it wants to (will TTIP pass? won't it?…

> The people who run the Commission have been saying explicitly they don't even want to start talking about a free trade deal with the UK until after the UK is fully out.

This is incorrect. They are saying there will be no negotiation until Article 50 invoked, after which there will be two years of negotiations before complete exit.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#263

Post by Symbiote »

sievebrain wrote: post #67
ThePhysicist wrote: post #7

A few months ago I attended the "Quantum Europe" conference in Amsterdam, where the new EU flagship project on quantum computing was kicked off and celebrated. With a total funding volume of 1 BN € this initiative is huge, and there are several British universities and research centers involved. Now with the BREXIT it's unclear whether they will be able to still participate in this project, which will start in 2018.…

So tell the EU to let British universities continue to participate regardless of EU membership. If you believe they will say no for purely political reasons, then there's the problem. There are lots of academic collaborations that span the globe. It's only the EU that artificially ties quantum computing research to immigration policies. edit: There is a massive amount of political downvoting going on in this thread.…

> There is a massive amount of political downvoting going on in this thread

People might be fed up reading your opinion. You've posted 25 comments on this story, many of them alike.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#264

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #233
DanBC wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Leave said they would continue to fund science, farms, Wales and Cornwall and match the EU funding. How can they fund all that stuff when they said they would spend all that money on the NHS? http://imgur.com/indvx6a "Let's give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week" - that's not "some of" or "part of", that's "all of".

The leave campaign was made up of a lot of random people who all had different ideas. You pick one who has an idea that you agree with and vote for that person. Not everyone in the leave campaign agreed with "Let's give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week" .... the people who DID don't want to fund science with that money. I assume that have another idea for where that money will come from.

Ah, so a lot of random people all make different promises and every voter believes in their favourite pick. For every broken promise you just have to point at the "random people" and say 'Booya, that promise doesn't count" even if all promises get broken. Neat trick.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#265

Post by lispm »

sievebrain wrote: post #120
pjc50 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the sibling comment points out, the participation involves money. If the UK stops paying into the EU, it stops recieving payouts.

But it hasn't stopped paying in money, and the EU could easily strike a separate deal to allow continued participation in Horizon 2020 if it wanted to. My point stands: the EU allocates research funding based on political concerns that have nothing to do with science. And that needs to stop.

Research/Science is one of THE main political topics for every country and also for the EU (and other European institutions involved in science). 'Science' was never and will never be free of political concerns. It's just the opposite.

> continued participation in Horizon 2020

My impression was that the UK wanted to distance itself from the 'EU superstate'. Research is just one topic. Get rid of centrally planned and funded research projects, which are for the political benefit of the EU. ;-)

> if it wanted to.

'cherry picking'. Probably easier for Britain to concentrate on non-EU research projects. Since they save money from not paying to the EU, the UK can now freely invest that money into their own research projects and attract partners.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#266

Post by jjp »

actsasbuffoon wrote: post #219
bpyne wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know little of Britain's political system. If Article 50 isn't being invoked until the end of the year, can Britain have another national vote on Brexit before then?

It's not clear if they'll be waiting until the end of the year. David Cameron said he was going to wait for his replacement to start Article 50, and he would step down in October. Now that he's announced that he's stepping down tomorrow, we'll have a new prime minister much more quickly than anticipated. That might mean Article 50 could be coming within the next few weeks/months.

As there are already legal challenges to whether the PM can declare Article 50 without a new Act of Parliament [1] and that Parliament goes into Summer recess on July 21st until 5th September [2] then struggling to see how we're going to start much before end of September at the earliest.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/08/legal-attemp... [2] http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/bu...

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#267

Post by sievebrain »

chimprich wrote: post #262
sievebrain wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it an extraordinary claim? The people who run the Commission have been saying explicitly they don't even want to start talking about a free trade deal with the UK until after the UK is fully out. There's no reason for this, they could easily run the talks in parallel, but they have no desire to do so. Now consider the extreme difficulty the EU faces in signing deals even when it wants to (will TTIP pass? won't it?…

> The people who run the Commission have been saying explicitly they don't even want to start talking about a free trade deal with the UK until after the UK is fully out. This is incorrect. They are saying there will be no negotiation until Article 50 invoked, after which there will be two years of negotiations before complete exit.

I'm afraid it is correct:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36682735

The EU's Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, says the UK cannot begin negotiating trade terms with the bloc until after it has left. "First you exit then you negotiate," she told BBC Newsnight.

Now how much power does Ms Malmstrom have over EU trade policy? I would assume quite a lot. It may be that she still ends up being wrong, but my statement was correct and your rebuttal was not.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#268

Post by lispm »

lhnz wrote: post #23

Is it really likely that Oxford, Cambridge and other Russell Group universities are no longer going to be allowed to do Science alongside European universities? Is Theresa May and the conservative government against investing in Science? It seems to me that most of this is is just knee-jerking, and it's likely that there are quite a few people who will work to ensure that things continue to work as they should. Edit:…

My impression was that Germany does some cool science, too and participates in many European and international research projects.

See for example the Mac Planck Gesellschaft: https://www.mpg.de/en

Germany would be dumb to quit the European science cooperation.

https://www.mpg.de/europe

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#269

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

endeavour wrote: post #215
orf wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying "any trade deal is better than no trade deal?". Just because the EU doesn't have one with China doesn't mean Switzerland's deal is better.... than a deal that doesn't exist.

No, I was just giving some examples. If you follow your logic the UK needn't worry about not having a trade deal with the EU.

> If you follow your logic the UK needn't worry about not having a trade deal with the EU.

No, that does not follow.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#270

Post by FrojoS »

programLyrique wrote: post #191
misja111 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is a net payer to the EU. For instance in 2015 alone, UK's net payment to the EU was about 8.5 billion pounds. So after the Brexit there will be more than enough money to continue the research funding. But as you mention already, it is another question if the government will be wanting to pay it. But is this really such a bad thing? The difference will that instead of the EU, the UK itself will decide which of…

EU research funding is also a huge incentive for collaborative research between research groups in various European countries, pooling talents from all over Europe. Research needs international collaboration, and UK funding only would make it more difficult.

In my experience, EU funding is often used to force research groups across Europe to 'collaborate'. Well at least on paper, since it's so much easier or even required to get funding if you propose 'pooling talent' and other buzz terms.

Just as a sanity check: there is no reason (other than your funding agency stopping you) for researches with their own funding to collaborate across borders where and when they see fit.

Btw, here in Switzerland the sky didn't fall either after the people voted to 'leave' (the free EU labor market). After all the doomsday talk, Swiss labs can still apply to EU grants. The only thing that has changed that the money that formerly took a detour to EU now goes directly from the Swiss government to the Swiss labs.

Calm down people. Nothing gets eaten as hot as it gets cooked. Its of mutual benefit for almost everyone in Europe to continue free trade with Britain.

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