Horizon 2020 European programming and ANR actions – how do they interconnect?
ANR anchors its action in the European Research Area. ANR's Work Programme thus hinges extensively around the 9 major societal challenges identified in the national strategic agenda "France Europe 2020", whose structure is consistent with the Horizon 2020 programme.
Furthermore, to optimise the public grants for research, the funding proposed by ANR complements that of the European Commission: the research themes supported by the ANR through its generic call for proposals must supplement the themes that are not the subject of a call launched in 2014 in the framework of "Horizon 2020". This aspect of non-overlapping of themes is taken into account in the pre-proposal evaluations.
Lastly, to reinforce the participation of French researchers in European projects, the Ministry for Higher Education and Research has set up a new network of "National Contact Points" (PCN). Comprising experts in the European programmes, the PCNs are consortiums tasked with assisting the French project principal investigators in responding to the Horizon 2020 calls for proposals on given themes. ANR has been assigned responsibility for coordinating the "PCN FET" which concerns future and emerging technologies. This falls into the continuity of the coordination activities engaged by ANR within the FLAG-ERA ERA-NET, a European initiative focusing on highly innovative research projects: the European Commission's "FET Flagship" projects.
Horizon 2020 – The European research funding programme
With a budget of 79 billion euros covering the period from 2014 to 2020, the Horizon 2020 Programme brings together all the European Union Funding instruments for research and innovation and hinges around three major priorities, namely scientific excellence, industrial primacy and societal challenges. It aims at reinforcing the competitiveness and the position of the European Union on the international scene in the fields of research, innovation and technologies, and to take into consideration the concerns of the public through the responses to major societal challenges. Horizon 2020 will take effect as of 1st January 2014, but the majority of the calls for proposals under the 2014 budget were launched by the European Commission as of 11th December 2013. They have a budget of 7.8 billion euros. |
