Contributions from plant research and innovation to EU competitiveness – EPSO submission to the European Commission’s consultation on the next Multiannual Financial Framework

Jun 11, 2025 | EPSO, WG Agricultural Technologies, WG Global Plant Research including Developing Countries, WG Horticulture, WG Molecular Farming, WG Nutritional Security, WG Outreach and Public Dialogue, WG Photosynthesis (PAI), WG Plant Health, WG Plants and Microbiomes, WG Tree Biology and Biotechnology

EPSO welcomes the European Commission’s consultation and provides input on the importance of the next Framework Programme (FP) for EU competitiveness.

The European Research and Innovation FPs are crucial to enable scientists and innovators across Europe to collaborate to generate knowledge, to apply this knowledge to address todays and future challenges and to help building a strong, competitive and resilient, inclusive and democratic European society and improving life on earth.

All scientists and entrepreneurs would benefit from a stronger stand-alone R&I FP with a ringfenced budget as a crucial factor to increase EU competitiveness.

They would benefit from

  • a stronger ERC and reinforced MSCA.
  • Reinforcing the collaboration pillar and adding Research Actions (RAs) to create an upwards research and innovation spiral.
  • Policymakers defining the goals but leaving the pathways to reach them open to beneficiaries to truly enable innovation.
  • Consulting European academic associations and European industry associations to identify funding priorities.
  • Simplifying implementation procedures: Increase trust in and flexibility for


Plant scientists took an active role in the EU FPs from the start and want to contribute to the future.

They are active in pillar 1, mainly in the ERC and the MSCA, both working very well.

They could contribute more to the collaboration pillar (in Horizon Europe pillar 2), particularly on the theme on Food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and environment. To this end, we suggest the following improvements:

  • Address Food and Nutritional Security, environmental sustainability, biodiversity, human health and bioeconomy in parallel
  • Improve / adapt crops towards ‘Diverse crops for diverse diets and human health and resilient production’.
  • Combine approaches on crop improvement, crop management and crop processing.
  • Policy makers should define the goals but leave the pathways how to achieve these open to the stakeholders.
  • Create a new heading ‘Enabling sustainable crop improvement’ in the Work Programme and / or partnership ‘Plant biology and breeding’.
  • Better link the health theme with the food, agriculture, biotechnology theme.

EPSO looks forward to further discuss and help implement these recommendations with colleagues from the European Commission and the Member State ministries and funders.

Click here to read: Full EPSO position paper & Contribution ID: f614256c-75e8-4ad6-a771-a4a70b94c0be.pdf, submitted 2.5.2025 to the MFF / EU funding for competitiveness consultation.

 

Contact:

Karin Metzlaff, EPSO Executive Director, BE