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U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

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Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#61

Post by sealeck »

exar0815 wrote: post #31
atemerev wrote: post #22

And Switzerland is still out, without any pathway for getting back, negotiations have stalled. This is an absolute disgrace for our country.

Switzerland flushed tremendous amounts of goodwill in all of europe, especially eastern europe, with their ridiculous stance on weapons deliveries - or non-allowance of deliveries tangentially related to switzerland. Don't know whether this especially is related, but expect more of that.

Sure, but Switzerland has probably more scientific output than all of Eastern Europe.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#62

Post by sveme »

arrowsmith wrote: post #54
tokai wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have any data on that? Reading reports on European research output UK is nothing special. Edit: those corrupt uni ranking lists mean nothing.

According to the US News "Best Global Universities" report [0], which ranks universities for their "academic research performance and their global and regional reputations", the UK has 4 universities (Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Imperial) in the global top 20. The rest of Europe has zero. Alternatively, the UK has 6 universities in the global top 40, while the rest of Europe has two (one in the EU, one in Switzerland.) T…

One problem with this is that research on the continent is often done by research organisations that aren't covered by these assessments. Max Planck and Leibniz in Germany, CNRS, Institut Pasteur in France, EMBL, EBI, ESO etc. as European research institutes (EBI is interestingly in the UK). So if you look at research, you cannot just look at universities.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#63

Post by clarada »

A lot of the comments here ignore the fact that Horizon membership was agreed as part of the original Brexit negotiations.

The EU have been reneging on this agreement based on the rather dubious pretext that the UK wouldn't allow them to take control over Northern Ireland.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#64

Post by orwin »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #37
kramerger wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the scheme is there to simplify collaboration across borders and connect research teams with very different skills. While you can still do it outside the EU programs, it will require a lot of administrative work which most universities cannot handle.

If being part of the scheme suddenly makes everything possible then I'd say the system is indeed designed to make things difficult for those not part of the scheme... Let's not kid ourselves, this is geopolitics and influence, not just generous cooperation. Edit: Very strange to observe the reactions to my comment... many of you seem have a knee-jerk, black and white, if not naive, reaction to Brexit and the EU. Both…

I don't think you appreciate how H2020 (the previous Horizons Europe) worked imho.

Go make research on air purity in the UK. Buy your captors, your GPU, data storage, all that stuff.

Or,and this is crazy, participate in a project across Europe. Paris already have captors a'd the data is already accessible. Munich make their air data accessible, like Rome and Berlin. Now you buy captors for a dozen small cities accross Europe, Warsaw and London. You still only need one computer, but you can have the Italian team working on prevision, the UK team working on health outcomes with the French, and probably other team working with other use of the data.

In the end, it's cheaper, you get more data, and are able to do more with it.

[edit on response to your edit] : listen, you're the one making it a brexit thing. I've worked with UK researchers after brexit, they weren't kicked out of H2020. A team from Tunisia was a part of the research too, and they aren't in the EU. Obviously it's better to be part of research initiative than alone, I don't get your point at all in fact.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#65

Post by jjgreen »

bowsamic wrote: post #27
O_nlogn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I voted to remain, but this is a great example of misleading/fear mongering by the remain campaign. They very vocally claimed that all the "good bits" of the EU cooperation would be permanently ended by leaving the Union. As evidenced by this news and others, that is untrue. There is clearly room for close cooperation in many areas without surrendering sovereign control over your nation.

Your attitude is strange. If you break a friendship in a painful way, you don't at the same time think "oh but I can surely resume borrowing his record collection in the future". > There is clearly room for close cooperation in many areas without surrendering sovereign control over your nation. Are you sure you voted remain? This is basically the prototypical pro-leave argument.

Possibly by accident?

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#66

Post by sealeck »

atemerev wrote: post #42
bacchus123 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it isn't that we wouldn't want to participate but the EU is connecting our Horizon participation with other topics that have nothing to do with it. So I don't really see us rejoining it anytime soon.

As a small country, Switzerland will not be able to finance its world-class scientific infrastructure independently. It is a catastrophe. International cooperation is crucial in science.

Switzerland is a pretty rich country, and spends roughly 22bn CHF per year on R&D (about half that of France with around 1/8th of the population). Swiss universities are also a _lot_ better than their continetal European counterparts.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#67

Post by blibble »

bowsamic wrote: post #23

I'm not surprised. This was one of the aspects of Brexit that seemed completely untenable and disastrous. Some aspects of Brexit are "bad but acceptable" but this was an "if we don't revert this one British R&D and science are screwed" aspect

staying associated with horizon was part of the brexit agreement Boris signed

the EU delayed implementation in order to use horizon as a stick to apply political pressure in an unrelated area (as it continues to do with switzerland)

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#68

Post by emptyfile »

clarada wrote: post #63

A lot of the comments here ignore the fact that Horizon membership was agreed as part of the original Brexit negotiations. The EU have been reneging on this agreement based on the rather dubious pretext that the UK wouldn't allow them to take control over Northern Ireland.

[dead]

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#69

Post by PedroBatista »

This is "great news" for researchers and UK universities in particular but this is also "terrible news" because it's yet another instance of special treatment that weakens the overall system. What I mean by that it's the notion of "we can be out while still be kinda in". No system can survive for long if this is widespread.

I get most of the UK scientific community was against Brexit, but the truth is the majority voted what they voted, yes it's a terrible mistake even seen from Pluto but it is what it is. If you want in again, then make the political transformations first like anyone else. Yes, nothing was ever by the book and perfect but this type of loopholes, Northern Ireland deals, etc. will come out as net-negative in the end.

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