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Horizon Europe is the EU’s main funding program for research and innovation. However, the EU has just agreed to cut the program’s budget by €2.1 billion by continuing to support Ukraine as part of the EU’s long-term budget renegotiation. Paradoxically, the cuts come at a time when the EU claims it wants to become more competitive in the world. “I can’t be happy about it,” Ilyana Ivanova told her Talking Europe. The EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth speaks to Armen Georgian about the future of Horizon and its work to improve educational outcomes and combat disinformation in education systems across the EU. Ms Ivanova is scheduled to visit London and Edinburgh as the UK joins Horizon Europe under the new deal, which she describes as a “win for both sides”.
Ivanova laments that Horizon has lost 2.1 billion euros out of its 95.5 billion euro budget, saying, “We are cutting back on our most important investments in the future: research and innovation.” 95.5 billion euros is a big number, but it’s actually not that much compared to its competitors. ” Ivanova said the current cuts (agreed to by EU member states) “are a red flag.” We desperately need to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of current spending and secure financial support for the next framework programme. I am in discussions with the (EU) ministers, especially the finance ministers, and I hope that they will soon see that this is a strategically important investment. ”
Ivanova admits that she is concerned about educational performance in the EU. “I am worried about Europe as a whole. When it comes to the level of education and basic skills, if you look at the latest PISA (OECD) results, you can see that there is no improvement in any member country. I’ve been to , and we talked about there too, that they’re worried about their reading and writing skills and their level of understanding of math. So this is something that I’m very concerned about. And obviously Although our capabilities at European level are limited, we will continue to work very diligently with Member States to address this issue.”
Also related to education, Ivanova also touches on the issue of disinformation, which she considers to be “extremely important” in an EU election year. Her fight against misinformation “needs to start at a very young age,” she says. “It should start with us in the family as parents. It is our responsibility to educate our children and give them the tools to distinguish between right and wrong. And of course here the role of schools and education is essential. We provide teachers with many tools to help them build the knowledge they need. Things are evolving very quickly and fake news is being spread in more innovative ways every day. Therefore, teachers need to receive the ongoing training we offer, while at the same time updating school curricula to improve the digital literacy of young children.”
Commenting on the UK joining the Horizon Europe program three years after Brexit, Ms Ivanova said: I’m very happy because I think our relationship has been revived. We have known many success stories over the years, so we look forward to a real win-win for both parties. With their help, I will also visit Scotland. University of Edinburgh. Horizon Europe has 177 participating countries and I can’t think of any other program in the world that offers so many opportunities for researchers. ”
Program production: Sophie Samaille, Yi Sung, Perrine Desplat, Agnès Le Cossec
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