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Nordic Five Tech calls to safeguard EU R&I budget

The Nordic Five Tech alliance calls for a Horizon Europe budget supporting Europe’s sustainable future through fundamental and applied research and innovation.

The upcoming EU framework programme for research and innovation, Horizon Europe, is essential for Europe’s ambitions such as transitioning to a climate-neutral economy by 2050, global leadership in artificial intelligence, and the delivery of solutions to grand challenges through research and innovation missions.

The recent discussions on the multiannual financial framework (MFF), EU’s next long-term budget for 2021-2027, give rise to concerns of tentative budget cuts to Horizon Europe. Such cuts would stand in contrast to the European Commission’s request to allocate €100 billion and the European Parliament’s call to increase funding to the framework programme for research and innovation.

Horizon Europe is an investment in Europe’s future allowing for key technological development and ensuring broad European perspectives and strong transnational links. Through such investment, Europe strengthens its capability to address grand challenges and to build its innovation capacity.

Nordic Five Tech (N5T) is a strategic alliance of the five leading technical universities in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden: DTU, Aalto University, NTNU, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Chalmers. The alliance was established in November 2006 with the goal of utilizing the shared and complementary strengths and creating synergies within education, research and innovation. The N5T universities are committed to contributing to Europe’s ambitions in research and innovation by carrying out research and providing higher education for future generations.

The N5T alliance urges the Member States, the European Commission and the European Parliament to invest ambitiously in Horizon Europe and to balance the multiannual financial framework towards investing in new priorities ensuring investment in research and innovation which contribute to a sustainable future. In other words, The Nordic Five Tech alliance calls for ensuring the Horizon Europe budget which enables excellence-based fundamental and applied research, and the innovations needed for supporting Europe’s sustainable future.

Endorsed by the Nordic Five Tech University Presidents

  • Ilkka Niemelä, President, Aalto University, Finland
  • Stefan Bengtsson, President and CEO, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
  • Anders Overgaard Bjarklev, President, Technical University of Denmark
  • Sigbritt Karlsson, President, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
  • Anne Borg, Rector, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway