Red Square, Russia
Red Square, Russia © Jeremie R 20 March, 2013
Spring floods, with St. Nicholas Church on Lipno Island, Novgorod Oblast, Russia c Vitold Muratov

Lipno Island, Russia © Vitold Muratov

Russia collaboration to aid EU under H2020

Horizon 2020 is the world’s largest, publically funded R&D initiative. Although the framework programme is an EU-financed project, a core part of the scheme is to encourage international co-operation between countries, and therefore Horizon 2020 is open to non-EU applicants.

Outside the EU, Russia received the most amount of funding under FP7, with 452 organisations working on 281 projects receiving a combined €54.9m. According to Professor Leonid Bobylev of the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, Horizon 2020 is key to helping further establish Russia as a centre of innovation, develop its international scientific credentials and improve international co-operation with the EU further.

For Russia, what changes and improvements do you see in Horizon 2020 as compared to FP7?

Horizon 2020 will be a single programme bringing together three separate EU programmes, coupling research to innovation and focusing on societal challenges facing EU society, e.g. health, clean energy and transport. Climate change research in Horizon 2020 will also be largely mainstreamed, but one change compared to FP7 is to emphasise climate change research as a societal challenge.

One major change in Horizon 2020 is the simplification of rules and application procedures as well as   access to funding and evaluation criteria for participants. One particularly important improvement is reducing the time period required for which successful applicants can begin working on a project – from around 350 days under FP7, to 100 days in Horizon 2020. For institutions like the Nansen Center, whose functioning totally depends on project funding, this is a crucial improvement making it possible to plan activity more reliably.

To what extent do you think Horizon 2020 has the right priorities to tackle the problems facing Europe and its neighbouring regions?

The major issue facing Europe and its neighbouring regions, including Russia, is a crisis of the economic and financial system – the key challenge is to stabilise this system. Horizon 2020 is one of the major instruments to tackle this problem by investing in research, development and innovation.

Additional problems facing Europe and other regions include global warming, sustainable development and societal challenges; Horizon 2020 is focused on tackling societal challenges. There are now indications that the scale of the problems arising from the global warming, as well as the rate of warming itself, is underestimated. The Earth is continuing to warm up and the frequency and intensity of extreme events all over the world, including Europe, is growing. Therefore, the mitigation of global warming and adopting measures to combat the process should be the focus of science and society. In our view, Horizon 2020 has, to a certain extent, sufficient instruments to answer these challenges.

International co-operation is a key dimension of Horizon 2020. How do you think researchers in Russia can best take advantage of the new framework programme?

The Russian Federation inherited a strong science base from the former Soviet Union. However, federal funding of science in Russia until now was only about 1.1% of GDP and has not shown stable growth. This is substantially less than the sufficient 2% of GDP acceptable in the G7.

In December 2011, the Russian government launched a new strategy document for innovation policy entitled ‘Innovative Russia 2020’. The major goal of this strategy is strengthening the processes of innovative development and economic diversification in Russia and in order to meet this goal, a crucial role has been given to science, which should become one of the main resources for economic growth.

The Russian Federation undertakes special measures to boost science which include investing substantial funds in the science and technology sector, establishing the Skolkovo Innovation Center and involving world-leading researchers in developing Russian science through the Megagrant programme.

One of the measures, in our opinion, should be to also deepen the level of involvement of Russian researchers and institutions in international research activity, including Horizon 2020. In fact, despite the problems encountered by Russian science, the number of top-cited papers from Russia is increasing annually. In our mind, this is particularly due to the growing involvement of Russian scientists in international research, particularly EU framework programmes. Russia is already the leading international partner in FP7 with 428 participants receiving €57.6m. The reinforcing of international co-operation between Russia and the EU is stipulated in the framework of Horizon 2020.

For Russian researches personally, Horizon 2020 offers an opportunity to participate in international collaborative projects and receive grants from the European Research Council. The ERC, based on its success in FP7, will continue to be a major instrument under Horizon 2020 in fostering scientific excellence. In our view, the activity of Russian scientists in FP7 has been insufficient. However, we can expect that this activity will increase in Horizon 2020, especially after launching the international awareness-raising campaign ‘ERC goes Global’ in 2012, along with a visit of its secretary general to Russia.

What role do you expect EuRuCAS and the Nansen Center could play in Horizon 2020?

The new EU international co-operation strategy in research and technologies set out in September 2012 focuses on research in areas of common interest. One of these research areas is climate and environmental changes in the Arctic and Northern Eurasia and includes their socioeconomic impacts. This is an area for strengthening co-operation between EU member states, associated countries and Russian researchers in the on-going EU FP7 EuRuCAS Project (European-Russian Centre for co-operation in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic environmental and climate research). EuRuCAS brings together researches with different competences across Europe and Russia allowing multidisciplinary collaboration in Arctic research including socioeconomic aspects. This corresponds to priorities in Horizon 2020.

One of the major goals of EuRuCAS is preparing an infrastructure for the continuation of EU-Russia co-operation in the Arctic research far beyond its completion, using the Nansen Center as a catalyst to strengthen this collaboration. The key instrument to secure the continuation of this co-operation is submitting joint proposals and starting new joint projects. From this point of view, Horizon 2020 is a major programme to continue co-operation for EuRuCAS and the Nansen Center and will provide funding between 2014 and 2020.

We await with great interest the first call of Horizon 2020, and will be organising a EuRuCAS workshop to agree the first joint proposals to be submitted within this first call.

Professor Leonid Bobylev

Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center