In December 2020 Yes is the European Union Horizon research program officially closed 2020, started in 2014 (replaced by the Program Horizon Europe starting from January 1st 2021, for programming 2021-2027). Although several funded projects have yet to be completed, some data on the participation of European countries in the program are already available.

In the lasts 7 years, more than 150.000 participants – between research institutes, companies and individual scientists – they received almost altogether 60 billions of euros in research funding. Projects completed by December 2020 they almost produced 100.000 publications and about 2.500 patent and trademark applications.

There were notable differences between states in the distribution of research resources. Between these, the three largest economies in the EU have almost achieved 40% of funds: researchers in Germany, France and the UK received a grand total of over 22 billion euros. Sweden, Denmark and Finland, which together represent little more than 4% of the total EU population, they got more than overall 4,8 billions of euros in funding, about 8% of the total.

Despite efforts to strengthen research in Eastern Europe, in the European research landscape a clear east-west gap persists. Scientists and research institutes in Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania were among the least successful participants in Horizon 2020, with a grand total of just over 1 billion euros.

 

Fonte: newsletter first. Full article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03598-2