R&D commissioner eyes budget as many top bids go unfunded

Iliana Ivanova pessimistic after evaluation reveals Horizon 2020 needed €159 billion more for top proposals

The EU research and innovation commissioner Iliana Ivanova has underscored concern about funding shortfalls in the EU’s R&I programme, saying the last iteration would have had needed three times its budget to fund all the high-quality proposals it received.

Ivanova (pictured second from right) expressed pessimism about ongoing negotiations over the budget for the current programme, which also has a huge mismatch between available funding and the amount needed to back all high-quality requests from researchers.