24 Jan 2023
The Guild calls for re-orientation of EU missions

The Guild, an association of twenty-one European research-intensive universities in sixteen countries, has released a statement on R&I missions in Horizon Europe. In this paper, The Guild calls for strengthening the research focus of missions funded from the Horizon Europe budget, so that their original goals of addressing transformative, inter- and transdisciplinary and societal challenges could be met effectively. The Guild universities voice their concern about the implementation of the R&I missions after observing low application rates to many calls. 'The missions’ calls have failed to attract research communities to get involved due to the lack of opportunities for collaborative research', the paper says.
In order to address this issue and ensure the participation of leading scientists in the calls for missions, The Guild suggests e.g. to only support actions that advance research and innovation and to encourage more bottom-up approaches in the calls for proposals, to ensure greater flexibility in the submission process and project planning.
The paper can be found here: