British university research programmes to lose £1 billion a year in EU funding/UK scientists being dropped from research projects

UK scientists are being dropped from collaborative research projects because of fears that they will now lose their EU funding.

The Guardian reports that the backlash against UK researchers began immediately after the referendum, “when the failure to plan for a post-Brexit Britain cast serious doubts over the chances of British organisations winning future EU funding”.

British researchers receive about £1 billion a year from EU funding programmes such as Horizon 2020.

The universities which the newspaper surveyed are those of the Russell Group – 24 of the UK’s elite institutions, which include Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, University College London and Imperial College.

Joe Gorman, a senior scientist at Sintef, Norway’s leading research institute, told The Guardian that UK industry and universities will see “a fairly drastic and immediate reduction in the number of invitations to join consortiums”.

Only 12% of bids for Horizon 2020 funds – one of the EU’s main research funding programmes – are successful as it is. Given the low probability of winning funds at the best of times, Gorman said it was natural risk aversion to be cautious of UK partners. In many cases, British organisations will not have a clue they have lost out, he said: “If you don’t get invited to the party, you don’t even know there is a party,” he said. “I strongly suspect that UK politicians simply don’t understand this, and think it is ‘business as usual’, at least until negotiations have been completed. They are wrong, the problems start right now.”