The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) welcomes today’s announcement of a deal to secure UK association to Horizon Europe, the €95.5 bn (£82 bn) European Union scientific research initiative, and to enable full UK access to data from the Copernicus Earth Observation satellites.
This ends several years of uncertainty, where UK scientists were encouraged to apply for Horizon funding, but winners were not able to base funded projects in UK institutions. Since the vote to leave the European Union in 2016, the RAS consistently argued for membership of Horizon Europe and future EU framework programmes for science, given that the astronomy, space science and geophysics communities are significant beneficiaries of the scheme. In addition many of our Fellows working in Geophysics depend on Earth Observation data of the kind provided by the Copernicus satellites.
Professor Mike Edmunds, the President of the Royal Astronomical Society, said:
“This is great news for UK and European science. I am delighted that we have finally secured association to Horizon Europe, which will help UK scientists to pursue deeper collaboration with their international peers to the benefit of all.”
Joint European Commission - UK Government statement
Questions and Answers on the UK's Association to Horizon Europe and Copernicus