14 Oct 2026
The Guild urges European Council to give highest priority to FP10 in next MFF
Following the Irish Council Presidency's presentation of the new ²negotiation box² with revised budget figures for the EU budget 2028-2034, The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities has published a critical statement on this proposal, saying it would "damage Europe and threaten its future in an increasingly competitive and uncertain world".
The Guild states that it is lamentable that too many Member States see a decrease in their national contribution to the EU budget as a solution for domestic fiscal consolidation. The association is particularly worried that the proposed cuts are uneven across the different headings and programmes of the next MFF, with a nearly 10% decrease provided for the next Horizon Europe framework programme (FP10), to €140 billion in constant prices (€158.2 billion in current prices), which The Guild deems "unacceptable". The association points on the one hand to the celebration of new Nobel Prize winners who have benefited from Horizon Europe funding, and on the other to the most recent Science, Research and Innovation Performance of the EU report finding that the EU again failed to reach the 3% of GDP target for research and development (R&D) investment. Together, the EU and its Member States will need to invest an additional €565 billion to meet this goal by 2030. Another European Commission report highlighted that the ongoing Horizon Europe would need more than €150 billion extra to support all high-quality proposals and that, because of budget shortages, 75% of these proposals remain unfunded.
For The Guild, it is urgent to recognise that putting R&I at the core of the EU's budget is a necessity for Europe's future and therefore urges the European Council to give FP10 the highest priority in the next MFF and a commensurate budget of €177 billion in constant prices (or €200 billion in current prices), an amount also defended by the European Parliament. In a similar vein, The Guild is also deeply concerned about the proposed budget cuts to Global Europe and the next Erasmus+ programme.
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