Australia has just concluded negotiations to associate with Pillar II of Horizon Europe, paying to join the EU's flagship research and innovation program for its final round. The headlines rightly celebrate Australia's choice to purchase a seat at the table along with many of the world's most ambitious research economies. In announcing this commitment, the Government has implied that Australian researchers and industry now have access to a research fund worth €95 billion. While the enthusiasm is understandable, being clear eyed about what has actually been purchased would benefit the sector in terms of long-term commitment for R&D funding, at home and abroad.
At a time when the sector is unified in calling for Australia to invest more in R&D, with a number of reforms being recommended, it can be hard to fathom the scale and complexity of the EU's supranational science and innovation program. That headline number of €95 billion commenced in 2021, servicing many funding calls across the programmes’ three pillars. It involves tens of thousands of organisations spread across almost 50 EU member states and associated countries. All working to lift the research and innovation capacity of the EU and its global partners.
By 2027, when Australian association kicks in, the majority of this Horizon budget will have been committed. The Australian government has agreed to pay for access to one of these pillars, for one final round, as one participant among many. Our ticket is discounted because it buys specific, one-time limited access to the last few calls of what has been a cracking set list.
This is not a criticism of the decision to join, just its timing. It's not the first time the sector has asked for association, and although it’s welcomed, this is a commitment that is absolutely overdue. Perhaps with that history, there is some concern that this commitment is conditional, when it should be seen as a first step in a much bigger, potentially transformative, step for how Australia shapes its own funding system let alone supports international collaboration.
Celebrating the investment made by the EU into their research base, in this case into Horizon, shouldn't divert attention from the dire need for our government to properly structure and fund its own research ecosystem. If the story we celebrate is that "we bought our way into Europe's much larger research economy with some cheap tickets," and "got more back than we were prepared to put in", then we risk endorsing perpetual underinvestment in the very international partnerships that Australia needs, at a time when we need them most.
If we don't "get back what we put in" will the Government be prepared to invest properly in this or other high value international research programs and partnerships? Will a Government that hasn’t committed to hitting its own aspirations for R&D expenditure be willing to pay the full ticket price for FP10 Association? Or will our universities, innovative companies and agencies be left (again) to wait outside the main show when they could be building much more valuable scientific networks and strategic linkages?
Being honest about that now, while the association is fresh and the next round of negotiation is still some years away, is considerably more useful than it being revealed under pressure when European partners start asking harder questions about what Australia actually brings to this very big, but very competitive, table.
It's important to recognise then that what makes the Horizon association so attractive to Australian researchers isn't just the funding, it's the opportunity to freely participate in a program designed to reward great science that has impact across multiple jurisdictions, industry sectors and disciplines globally. Australia has talked about improving science and industry linkages to raise investment in R&D and improve its impact for years, but hasn't managed to get it right.
The EU lets funding flow toward whichever combination of universities, companies, research agencies, and NGOs the work actually requires, governed by accountability for outcomes rather than by which sector or institution the recipient happens to sit in.
Australia's own funding system rarely works this way. For example, an ARC lead researcher can't direct grant funding to a CSIRO colleague as a co-investigator, let alone a research partner from industry and certainly not a co-investigator based at an EU university or research institute.
The most valuable thing about the association isn't the total quantum of funding — it's that we've signed on to a program designed explicitly to achieve what we seek to foster: cross-sector collaboration, science-industry linkages, and impact-driven research that flows to where the work requires it. The question is how we go about achieving the same outcomes here.
For Australian researchers and institutions the question is not how much funding is available in the Horizon's 2027 work programme, but what specific calls, consortia, and projects are they really needed, and which of these are worth the investment of time and institutional resource to pursue.
One-off association may open some new doors, but the real value of multi-year programs like Horizon lies in the career defining relationships and institutional trust built over multiple funding cycles. Australia's research community, and their EU counterparts, are being asked to invest in partnerships without knowing whether Australia funding will still be on the table when those partnerships mature.
Our researchers' time has been our primary currency in global research partnerships, not our funding. Until we remedy that imbalance through sustained domestic investment in the people, infrastructure, and institutions that define its value then we'll be negotiating from a position weaker than our current international reputation implies.
The EU has been steadily building what Australia has long debated: a funding system that supports cross-sector collaboration and impact-driven research where funds flow to where they are needed, rather than just to whichever sector disperses the funding.
The big question shouldn't be about how much funding we can take from Horizon, but whether we can apply its lessons to amend our own architecture to achieve the same outcomes here, including making investment in R&D more attractive for governments and industry alike.
In some ways buying this ticket was the easy part. The hard work of building a funding architecture capable of attracting much greater levels of government and industry funding back here in Australia remains a work in progress.
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