European research excellence in times of non-association
Newly calculated figures illustrate the sharp decline in contributions from EU programmes to Swiss institutions between 2014 and 2017. They also attest to the relevance of Switzerland and the UK in terms of scientific excellence.
The Stick to Science campaign calls for a swift reassociation of Switzerland and the United Kingdom (UK) to Horizon Europe (HE), the European Framework Programme for research and innovation (2021–2027). For Switzerland, this follows the suspension of the country’s participation announced by the EU on 17 June 2021, after the cessation of talks on the signing of a new Swiss-EU institutional agreement on 26 May 2021, and a month after the launch of Horizon Europe on 12 May 2021. Since 2004, through bilateral agreements with the EU on research and education, the Swiss research community has been actively involved in the European research programmes up to Horizon 2020 (H2020), which concluded in December 2020. The EU has yet to release a final assessment of Horizon 2020. The new EU statistics portal, Horizon Dashboard, contains only limited statistics about national participation. On the Swiss side, the official participation figures date from January 2021 and are based on data which are not always publicly available. Our aim is therefore to summarise Switzerland’s participation in the EU programmes on the basis of the latest publicly available data.