31 January 2014 Last updated at 19:16
By Jonathan AmosScience correspondent, BBC News
The ERC funds activity across all fields of research, with the emphasis squarely on excellence
The new European Union research budget has had its official UK launch.
The funds are allocated through a competitive process, in which Britain traditionally fares very well - second only to Germany.
If this performance is maintained, UK universities, research centres and businesses could expect to receive £2bn in the first two years of Horizon 2020.
Such an allocation would equate to just over a fifth of the total British government spend on science.
"My challenge to the UK's researchers, universities, small and medium-sized enterprises, and large companies is to apply in huge numbers to participate in the programme," said EU Research Commissioner Maire Geoghegan-Quinn.
"The competition will be fierce but I also believe that the excellence of the projects and the proposals coming from the UK means it will do very well out of Horizon 2020."
Frontier research
The European bloc's 28 member states approved the implementation of Horizon 2020 last autumn, leading to the first grant applications call in December. The opening day of the process saw 70,000 forms being downloaded every hour.
As with the previous "Framework Programmes", the old name given to EU science and research budgets, the intention is that the hefty investment can act as a kind of innovation growth factor, bringing on the next-generation high-value services and products that keep Europe at the forefront of world markets.
And as with those previous programmes, a large segment of the funding will be focused on some key areas of societal need or impact, such as health, climate change, the environment, energy, security, and transport.
But Horizon 2020 plans to put an even greater emphasis this time on basic, or frontiers, research.
The European Research Council, the EU's "blue riband" funding agency, has had its own pot increased 60% to £10.7bn.
The ERC's sole criterion in judging grant applications is excellence, and UK-based scientists have been by far the biggest beneficiaries of its awards.
A fifth of all the grants have gone to British science, representing an investment of some £1.4bn to date.
Business partnerships
Sir Paul Nurse is president of the UK's Royal Society, which hosted Friday's launch event.
He told BBC News: "European money is really important and it's very good that it is going up by 30%. I think also driving collaboration across Europe is really good because we get access to 350 million people - it's one of the reasons [science] works so well in the United States.
"But particularly, at least from my perspective at the discovery research end, the ERC has made a very real difference. The European Commission is very proud of it and rightly so."
Continue reading the main story
Horizon 2020 - EU research budget
- Worth nearly £67bn (80bn euros) over 7 years
- Represents a 30% increase on last budget
- Research accounts for 7% of total EU spend
- UK contributes 11% of EU's total budget
- But receives about 16% of EU science funds
- UK-based researchers dominate ERC grants
Past Framework Programmes have been criticised for their bureaucracy. Companies have sometimes been dissuaded from applying because of the "expense" of winning an award (a grant will not cover all of the overheads of running a research project).
Horizon 2020 promises streamlined processes. "We've cut out loads of red tape," said Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn.
The hope is that many more businesses will now get involved, not least because they are the route through which discoveries become products, services, and jobs.
"Across Europe and elsewhere, we are concerned by impacts," said Robert-Jan Smits, whose job is to run Horizon 2020 within the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation.
"How can we ensure that the pounds we put into knowledge can be translated back into pounds again? That requires probably an industrial partner, to help ensure the results of research reach a market. There's no escape from that?"
International competition
The EU set a target in 2000 of making itself, "by 2010, the most competitive and the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world".
One of the metrics to judge this aspiration was the desire to spend 3% of GDP on research. However, four years after the target date, the EU-wide R&D spend has not gone much beyond 2%.
The economic downturn is undoubtedly a major reason for the undershoot. Companies cut back on R&D during the recession and government austerity measures have hit public investments hard.
But Europe's competitors have not stood still. The likes of the US, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore all have more intense spending than the EU bloc.
China, too, is emerging rapidly. "If you look at the kind of massive investment they're making in research and innovation - I think that's a wake-up call for Europe," said Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn.
〔駐歐洲特派記者胡蕙寧／倫敦報導〕全球最大科學研究計畫「地平線二○二○（Horizon 2020）」，一月三十一日在英國正式啟動，主要內容包括基礎研究、應用技術、社會挑戰等三大方向，幾乎囊括所有的歐盟科研項目，主力尤其放在整合歐盟各國的科研資源、提高科研效率、促進科技創新、推動經濟增長和增加就業機會等。選擇在英國啟動，被質疑為蓄意給「脫歐論」高漲的英國更多「歐盟利益」，預計英國可在未來七年中因此爭取到較多相關預算。
地平線二○二○計畫的前身是一九八四年的「歐盟科研框架計畫」，以研究前衛與競爭性科技為重點，領域廣闊，投注資金龐大。該計畫進行到第七期後，為突出科技創新的重要性，去年底批准第八期計畫改名為「地平線二○二○」，時間從今年開始到二○年，經費高達七百七十億歐元。
地平線二○二○開張首日的下載申請表數量高達每小時七萬份，可見其受歡迎的程度。該計畫的最大賣點之一，是成立歐盟創新與技術研究學院（EIT），七年期預算多達二十七億歐元，將匯聚歐盟的科技人才、研發、創新於一身。
歐盟二○○八年正式啟動EIT和「知識與創新共同體（KICs）」計畫，資助方向主要包括氣候變遷、通訊技術和新能源等三大領域，已投入三億歐元，最新通過的EIT建設又加上積極與健康的老齡化社會、原材料有效利用、未來食品安全、先進製造業、城市智能交通等五個全新領域。
