European Commission plans to temporarily cut the budget of Horizon Europe by €400?million (?333?million) to help fund a?drive to?bolster the development of semiconductors across the continent have caused concern.

The €95.5?billion research programme already had a?€1.3?billion pot to?support electronic component development and manufacturing, but that will be beefed up to €2.9?billion and rebranded to focus on microchips.

To fund this, officials want to cut the overall Horizon Europe budget by €400?million and to backfill that by not returning unspent funds from incomplete European Union research projects to EU?governments.

¡°The idea that a €400?million cut to Horizon can be repaid by decommitments is a creative idea, but it is very doubtful that it will work,¡± said Christian Ehler, an MEP who leads the European Parliament¡¯s work on Horizon.

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EU governments said on 15?March that the only unspent funds the bloc should not return to its member countries were those agreed under the seven-year budget for?2021?27. Mr Ehler said the cut should not happen until governments changed their position.

¡°It has to be a common understanding between the institutions that the cut can only happen to the extent to which the [European] Council accepts correcting the cut by decommitments. No?decommitments, no?cuts,¡± he said.

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Kurt Deketelaere, secretary general of the League of European Research Universities, said it was important to send strong signals to officials that Horizon could not be used as a fund for passing political priorities.

As well as funding research and development, the ¡°Chips Act¡± will try to build up semiconductor production capacities within the EU, which Professor Deketelaere said meant that the cut amounted to a diversion of money earmarked for research.

¡°If we allow other actors to think that that money can be used for something else outside the research and innovation field, then this is absolutely problematic,¡± he said, referring to the Horizon budget.

¡°If Mr Breton absolutely wants to have his European Chips Act, fine; but he has to pay for it himself. Perhaps he can go to the European Defence Agency and ask for the money there,¡± Professor Deketelaere added, referring to Thierry Breton, the French European commissioner, who leads on EU?digitisation efforts.

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The assumption that €400?million of project funding would go unspent was unfortunate when the Horizon programme was so competitive, said Joep Roet, a policy adviser for the Netherlands House of Education and Research, which monitors European policy developments.

¡°What does it say about the state of Horizon budget implementation, with its low success rates, if the commission can freely draw from the unspent budgets? Even if the €400?million is likely to return, isn¡¯t it sad that this is even possible?¡± he said.

A Commission spokesperson said there was no relation between unspent funding in the Horizon programmes and their low success rates. She said that the commission¡¯s pursuit and reuse of unspent money from funded projects was ¡°a sign of careful and rigorous use of public money¡±.

ben.upton@timeshighereducation.com