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Britain’s membership of Horizon, which funds research projects tackling crucial issues from the climate crisis to terminal diseases and improving food and energy security, was agreed as part of the post-Brexit trade deal in 2020. But it was never ratified in a tit-for-tat row between the EU and the UK over Northern Ireland Brexit arrangements.
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Britain’s membership of Horizon, which funds research projects tackling crucial issues from the climate crisis to terminal diseases and improving food and energy security, was agreed as part of the post-Brexit trade deal in 2020.
Prof Carsten Welsch, a physicist at the University of Liverpool who lost leadership of a £2.6m research project on a novel plasma generator that could be used in cancer treatment when the UK was excluded from Horizon, said: “I am absolutely thrilled about this news as we have been in a limbo situation for far too long.
Mike Galsworthy, the chair of European Movement UK, attacked the government for disadvantaging science by delaying associate membership of Horizon for so long.
The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has spent the last five months holding out for the “underperformance clause”, which was agreed in 2020, to be readjusted to guarantee a greater rebate if Britain failed to achieve previous levels of grants from the programme.
The path for the UK’s return to Horizon was cleared as far back as March after London and Brussels resolved their dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol, with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, promising a “swift” decision.
But stop-start talks over the following months were marred by demands by the UK for extra discounts to take account of the absent years, much to the fury of the science community, many of whom opposed Sunak’s plan B to go it alone.
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