European Commission released Annual Report on RTD Activities 2022

The report provides an overview of the EU’s key R&I activities in 2022 and the monitoring of Horizon Europe, H2020, and Euratom.

A significant part of the report is dedicated to the policy activities of 2022. One of the examples is the last year's Russian aggression in Ukraine, which has had immense consequences for the EU and its R&I landscape, in particular for scientific collaboration with Ukraine and Russia, but also for energy supply, secure supply chains and migration. In this context, the Commission imposed sanctions against Russia in the field of R&I and launched dedicated actions to support the Ukrainian research and scientific community.

Both, Russia’s war against Ukraine and the increased frequency of climate-related extreme events have made it even more urgent for the EU to transition to a fair green and digital society. The European Commission has presented and adopted many documents in these areas, such as the Communication on the EU solar strategy, The Circular Economy Package II, the Joint Communication on International Ocean Governance and many more.

When it comes to the current Framework Programme, 44 new calls for proposals covering a total of 202 topics were launched under the Horizon Europe main work programme 2021-2022. Overall, 874 topics under 160 calls for proposals as well as an additional 195 other actions were launched under the work programme 2021-2022 for a budget of around EUR 16 billion. Additional calls for proposals were launched by the European Research Council and the European Innovation Council. In total, 44 832 eligible proposals were submitted under these calls.

The first projects signed involve over 39 000 participants from 142 different countries, including 19% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and 15.7% from non-EU countries. The highest shares of participants come from higher education institutions (32.7%), private sector entities (30.7%) and research organisations (22.6%). A preliminary analysis shows that 35.6% of participants are new applicants.

The report can be downloaded from EUR-Lex website.