UK ‘on the brink’ of losing Horizon Europe participation

Do not wait for government action, the universities of the UK need to work together to establish an agreement themselves. The mistake of involving politicians at all is clearly visible in what is said here about an agreement being held up by the dispute over the NI Protocols. Research funding has absolutely nothing to do with trade agreements... the one should not affect the other & only does in some game-playing politician's mind who sees point-scoring as more important than serving the needs of real people trying to do real jobs (& conduct real research)!

I agree with m.roberston, but I'm not sure one can join Horizon Europe as a university alone or even as a group of universities. One can join as a country. Hence the need for politicians to be involved. Also, "joining" means paying into the Horizon Europe programme. Who would be paying? The univesities directly? When a country is EU member 'joining' the various programmes is pretty much automatic and it comes with the EU membership. Similar agreements are in place for EEA countries like Norway and Switzerland, and other countries who are paying to access the programme. The type of Brexit pursued by the UK government made the UK a Third Country, not an associate country, not an EEA country, nothing. Just a Third Country with essentially no direct access to EU research programmes, single market, and customs union. Until something is done at country level (see, politicians), we do risk losing access to Horizon Europe. It would be interesting to find out if it could possible to join as consortium of universities, for example. Though I imagine Russell Group, Universities Alliance and so on would need to come together. Interesting times...