Ministers took note of the state of play on negotiations with the European Parliament concerning the different parts of the Horizon 2020 programme, following the presentation of a report by the Irish Presidency.
Significant progress has been made in the negotiations of Horizon 2020, including during the 6 informal trilogues and several technical meetings to date. However, in the informal trilogue meeting of 16 April, it became apparent that the negotiations have reached a point at which a number of critical issues stand in the way of reaching agreement.
To make progress, the Presidency prepared a policy paper on which it presented the Presidency’s assessment on the critical issues for the Parliament at this stage. These were classified in 3 categories, namely (i) issues related to the Horizon 2020 architecture; (ii) new objectives, activity lines and sub-activity lines, and ways for improving the participation of small businesses in the programme; and (iii) simplification and effectiveness, in particular of the future funding model for research projects.
The discussion at Coreper, on 8 May 2013 gave the Presidency some indication as to where the Member States position themselves on these major issues and where a possible way towards a bigger compromise package could be sought. Following that discussion, the Presidency produced compromise proposals for discussion at the Research Working Party and in technical meetings with the European Parliament. An important new element in these discussions has been the budget.
Over the next few weeks, as part of building up the package to be agreed with the Parliament on 17 June, negotiations are likely to focus on the distribution of the budget between the different specific objectives and whether and how any budgetary preferences of the co-legislators are to be expressed in the text of the Horizon 2020 Regulation and its annexes.