€602 million in Horizon 2020 funding went towards tackling pandemic, Commission says
An annual review of EU research activity has underscored how responding to Covid-19 was the foremost concern for research policymakers last year.
As the outbreak became a pandemic, the EU swiftly began to channel funding from its 2014-20 R&D programme, Horizon 2020, into Covid-19 research in areas including diagnostics, treatments and socioeconomics, as well as infrastructure and data resources.
“EU leaders have committed to doing everything possible to support Covid-19 research,” the European Commission said in its annual report on EU research and technology development activities, published on 11 August.
“The first priority in 2020 was to mobilise Horizon 2020-supported research and innovation efforts conducted in the EU and together with international partners to combat the pandemic.”
€602 million allocated
To date, €602 million of Horizon 2020 funding has been allocated to Covid-related work, the Commission reported. This included €72m for a fast-track call under the Innovative Medicines Initiative public-private partnership, to which industry committed a further €45m.
Even bottom-up funding streams without any policy steer supported scores of projects related to Covid-19, according to the Commission. For example, a portfolio analysis by the European Research Council found it had funded 185 relevant projects “linked to understanding the pandemic”.
The bloc also addressed the effects of the pandemic through non-monetary means. For instance, the Commission issued numerous guidelines and developed the Manifesto for EU Covid-19 Research to maximise research results, which was endorsed by the World Health Organization.
The European Open Science Cloud data-sharing hub was made the host of the European Covid-19 data platform, which the Commission said has attracted more than 3.6 million requests since its launch on 20 April 2020.
One of the lasting lessons of the pandemic, according to the Commission, is that “international cooperation on research and innovation is more crucial than ever to tackle pressing global challenges”.