Brexit led to decline in UK participation in EU research programmes, report finds

A new report shows how 2016’s vote to leave the EU affected the participation of UK researchers in Horizon 2020 – the €80 billion (£69 billion) European research funding programme that ran from 2014 until 2020. The report shows that while the UK was the most active country in submitting research proposals in 2014, by 2020 it had dropped to 5th place. However, there was no impact on the success rates of proposals involving UK researchers, despite widely held concerns that such projects may be viewed less favourably.

The report was commissioned by the UK government’s science department to analyse UK participation in Horizon 2020 and understand the socio-economic benefits of projects that were funded by the programme. In addition to compiling data from various other reports on Horizon 2020, the new assessment involved surveying hundreds of researchers and carrying out in-depth interviews with representatives from government departments, funding bodies and scientific societies.

Kieron Flanagan, an expert on science policy from the University of Manchester who wasn’t involved in the study, notes that rarely has such a detailed analysis been carried out because the cost of UK participation in European research frameworks was previously ‘hidden’ within the country’s overall contribution to the EU budget. ‘Now it’s a very visible cost … so you can expect more scrutiny, more evaluation than there would have been in the past.’

More than 15,600 UK researchers were named as participants in proposals submitted during the first year of Horizon 2020. That number increased to over 18,600 in 2015.

However, the number of UK participants involved in Horizon 2020 research proposals declined in every subsequent year from 2016 onwards. While UK researchers made up 12% of all participants on Horizon 2020 proposals in each of the programme’s first three years, that figure had fallen to 6% by 2020 – just 10,600 researchers.

The trend is reflected in the amount of money that UK researchers applied for. The share of Horizon funding requested by UK researchers fell from 13% in 2014 to just 7% in 2020.

Perceived risk

A key factor that influenced this pattern was the referendum held in 2016, when UK voters opted to leave the EU. Despite assurances from the European Commission that the inclusion of UK partners would not affect a proposal’s chances of success, the uncertainty sparked by the vote created a perception that having UK researchers lead or collaborate on a Horizon project was risky.

55% of the successful UK-based Horizon 2020 applicants surveyed for the new report said they experienced ‘significantly reduced ability to coordinate projects’, while 47% found it more difficult to join consortia ‘due to perceived risks by EU partners’.

‘It’s pretty much in line with what people expected the results of Brexit to be,’ notes Flanagan. ‘There was effectively never a time when UK researchers couldn’t participate because of the guarantee. But … for various reasons, our European partners might have decided not to include us in bids, and therefore networks will have fractured and restructured.’

Flanagan points out that in addition to perceived risks to a proposal’s chances of success caused by the inclusion of UK partners, their involvement could also have created fears around the long-term success of a Horizon-funded project.

‘That period of instability creates a level of uncertainty that people will feel that it is more risky – not to the success of the bid to have a UK coordinator – but to the stability of the consortium,’ he says. ‘Because what happens if the UK and the EU fall out again and the UK gets excluded from the programme or something like that?’