Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in economics and founder of the “Chicago school”, was the father of a commonly held management principle according to which “the only responsibility of a company is to maximise the profit of its shareholders” (1970). As if they were guided by some kind of underlying universal order (Adam Smith’s famous “invisible hand”), he believed that companies whose sole objective was to maximise profits would spontaneously propagate shared value to society. There was no need to worry about external effects, such as environmental impact or social responsibility.
The campaign for a bigger and better-balanced EU research programme was long and filled with an uncertainty that was exacerbated by Brexit drama and a global pandemic. But now Horizon Europe is ready to start next year - shy of a formal endorsement by the EU Council and the European Parliament.
Technically speaking, money won't start flowing from the new programme for some weeks, because a lot of legal paperwork needs completing, Commission officials say. In the meantime, the Commission is disbursing funds authorised under the old programme, Horizon 2020.
The European Commission is redrafting parts of Horizon Europe to reflect lessons from the coronavirus pandemic, says the research and innovation commissioner Mariya Gabriel.
“It’s clear that after the crisis we should reorient some of our priorities in a more strategic way,” she told a Science|Business online conference. “One of the most important things is really to integrate our lessons learned during the crisis.”
As one part of the redrafting, a new partnership on pandemic preparedness is being drawn up.
Germany is getting closer to its self-imposed target of spending 3.5 per cent of GDP on R&D, new government data shows.
The 2020 edition of the Federal Report for Research and Innovation sees national R&D expenditure going above 3 per cent after more than a decade of growth. The government plans to reach the 3.5 per cent mark by 2025.
Germany is one of the few countries in Europe that was able to keep increasing R&D investment through the financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath.
An additional €675 million of Horizon 2020 funding is to be diverted into research on vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics against COVID-19, bringing the total investment in pandemic R&D from the programme to €1 billion.
The European Commission announced the move as part of its contribution to an international pledging event on Monday, which brought the total raised to date from around the world to €7.4 billion.
The European Commission is calling on all EU countries to put more focus on R&D in their economic policy, in its annual country-specific recommendations to national governments.
