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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

#91

Post by jcfrei »

PedroBatista wrote: post #69

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 vo…

Yeah but still makes sense for both because the UK is probably the best place for research in Europe: Oxford, Cambridge and a viable, international startup scene.

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

#92

Post by FiniteField »

gumballindie wrote: post #16
lwhi wrote: post #13

Sounds like we're going backwards! Soon we'll be collaborating with other nations about other things too!! /s

Maybe we'll make a trade deal with countries in our geographical proximity, so we can trade without barriers. Perhaps even allow people to go there and work, and people from there to come here. Who knows what the future brings.

Yes, and maybe after that we can create a new supranational government that has fundamental authority over our own government, is free to write laws for us, can overrule our courts, removes all sovereignty over immigration, has a parliament with many degrees of democratic separation from the electorate, has an unelected commission that makes all the laws, has ever-expanding centralisation of power written into its constitution, forces us to accept fleets of bottom-trawling fishing boats to decimate our waters, forces us to spend huge amounts of money to literally incentivise farmers to destroy natural habitat-

-wait why are you running away? This is exactly the same thing as a trade deal!

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

#93

Post by pjc50 »

FiniteField wrote: post #92
gumballindie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we'll make a trade deal with countries in our geographical proximity, so we can trade without barriers. Perhaps even allow people to go there and work, and people from there to come here. Who knows what the future brings.

Yes, and maybe after that we can create a new supranational government that has fundamental authority over our own government, is free to write laws for us, can overrule our courts, removes all sovereignty over immigration, has a parliament with many degrees of democratic separation from the electorate, has an unelected commission that makes all the laws, has ever-expanding centralisation of power written into its co…

> parliament with many degrees of democratic separation from the electorate

The country with the entirely unelected unremovable upper house has no business complaining about this.

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

#94

Post by FiniteField »

walthamstow wrote: post #51
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.

Except we did surrender sovereign control over our country. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/trading-and-moving-goods-in-and-... > Before you move goods between Northern Ireland and non-EU countries (including Great Britain) We started with borderless free trade from Iceland to Greece and we ended up with customs guidance that pretends that GB and NI are in different countries. The Brexit Trilemma is alive and well today.

Having to pretend GB and NI are different countries seems like the inevitable outcome of the Good Friday Agreement (or at least one interpretation of it) that requires you to pretend that parts of two different countries (NI and IE) are the same country. That was obviously not going to last indefinitely as long as the two places are ruled by different sovereign states (in this case, the UK and EU).

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

#96

Post by pjc50 »

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.

The EU would not allow the UK to break its agreement with EU member Ireland that there should be no border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Heck, even the Americans are on the Irish side of that particular dispute.

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

#97

Post by vidarh »

PedroBatista wrote: post #81
physicsguy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? The UK has 'rejoined' as an associate member, in the same way that a number of other countries are associate members.

Yes, but the deal is not really as a clean-slate external member just joined. Of course there are many pending issues from the past, as it would be expected, many long term investment and commitment were made and then one could colorfully say "the UK took the money and run" ( I know it's much more complicated than that ), and this deal kinda addresses that. I'm not against this particular deal, in fact I'm moderately…

But this does not seem to really be a special deal. Participation in Horizon on an associate level is available to any country that meets a set of criteria that largely boils down to pretty much any reasonably developed market economy, with a long list of non-EEA European or neighbouring countries automatically allowed under other criteria.

See Article 16 in [1].

For Horizon, it'd have been a major diplomatic "fuck you" if the UK was refused given the wording of Article 16.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/695/oj Regulation (EU) 2021/695 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 April 2021 establishing Horizon Europe

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

#98

Post by FatherPaulStone »

nairboon wrote: post #75

The EU still keeps science as a hostage for political games. Think about, who looses when you prevent science from happening? All of society. This is very self-destructive.

couldn't you simply apply the same logic to any aspect of the EU?

The EU still keeps trade as a hostage for political games. Think about, who looses when you prevent trade from happening? All of society. This is very self-destructive.

The EU still keeps free movement as a hostage for political games. Think about, who looses when you prevent free movement from happening? All of society. This is very self-destructive.

etc.

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

#99

Post by nvm0n2 »

jarvist wrote: post #85
isaacfrond wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly what I'm wondering. The deal seems to stipulate that on average you'd spend about as much as you receive. If so, why not spend the same amount of money on your own scientist? That way you have full control. I don't get what the UK gets out of it. For the EU I can understand, a larger budget means more science done, means more results. Who cares if some of it happens in the UK, since we are getting paid f…

Why would you want control? That means more bureaucracy you need to do yourself. In the UK (and I believe everywhere with a well functioning research culture), the 'Haldane principle' means that research funding is decided by researchers (not politicians / the civil service). https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmdi... Funding UK science via the ERC, means you are making use of the network effects…

What the ERC does is controlled by the Commission like everything else in Europe, it's not independent regardless of what it claims. The people making the decisions on what to fund are directly selected by the Commission itself.

So the EU's institutional agenda is indivisible from what gets funded via the ERC. That's why they fund stuff like research into disinformation, which the EU defines as more or less anything that goes against its own narratives or agendas, or cultural stereotyping:

https://erc.europa.eu/projects-statistics/stories/why-people...

https://www.adinaakbik.eu/projects/2702-eurotypes

Cultural stereotypes are often present in the political and media discourse on European Union (EU) governance: e.g., the lazy Greeks, the tax-dodging Italians, the stingy Dutch, and so forth. Especially when stereotypes are negative, they create conflict between national governments, fuel Euroscepticism among voters, and can lead to the discrimination of citizens or Member States.

To address this gap, EUROTYPES sets out to investigate how cultural stereotypes impact cooperation and effectiveness in contemporary EU governance.

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

#100

Post by rsynnott »

blibble wrote: post #67
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)

You mean, Britain wasn't honouring the withdrawal agreement so the EU withheld some of the benefits provided under that agreement?! How terrible. Britain should, naturally, get everything it wants without having to do anything that it signed up to do, because it's Britain (I'm pretty much convinced that a lot of Brexiters _actually believe this_...)
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