Sunak told to hand EU billions to rejoin scheme as Plan B will ‘cost us dear’

Peter Mason, who leads global research and innovation policy at Universities UK, previously told Science Business: “If an agreement on the Northern Ireland Protocol is reached, the UK’s financial contribution to the Horizon budget will need to be renegotiated before UK association can be confirmed, to reflect the fact that the UK Government has been funding UK participation in the programme over the last two years.”

British researchers’ interest in Horizon also plummeted because it is banned from joining, meaning the UK could tell the bloc that it should pay less to reflect the fact it is getting less money back.

But despite concerns that the UK may have to pay for parts of the scheme that it did not access due to a delay, other researchers are optimistic that the Government can sort this out.

Dr Daniel Rathbone, Assistant Director, Campaign for Science and Engineering, told Express.co.uk: “Negotiators should now press to associate the UK to Horizon Europe as soon as possible.

“There are clearly some outstanding issues to be solved including around the financial contribution but I think they are eminently solvable in a pretty short time frame. The Government has been able to negotiate the Northern Ireland issue in about four months and I don’t think you could say that this issue is anywhere near as complicated as the one with Northern Ireland.

Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1741785/sunak-eu-horizon-europe-delay-windsor-framework-brexit