Bella Fudge • 21.02.24 •  < 1 mins

The UK officially rejoined the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme on 1^stJanuary 2024. In this blog, ATI’s International Policy Manager Bella Fudge looks at the potential unlocked for UK aerospace organisations.

After several years of delayed negotiations, the UK reached agreement with the EU for access to the scheme in September 2023, paving the way for January’s formal re-association to the €95.5 billion (£82bn) research and innovation funding programme.

The decision to re-associate reflects the enormous collaborative potential of UK-EU partnerships across the innovation spectrum. UK researchers were ineligible to receive European Research Council grants and could not coordinate industry collaborations while outside of the Horizon Europe programme. Re-association restores access to these international exchanges of expertise and technology.

Horizon Europe’s substantial funding will be an important enabler for aerospace R&D, in 2024 and beyond. Beginning in Autumn 2024, the European Partnership for Clean Aviation will be looking at the development, integration, and validation of climate neutral aviation technology, and Clean Aviation is set to focus on several large-scale ground-based and flying technology demonstrators. These programmes are the cornerstones of future European aerospace R&D, and UK collaboration will enable a greater scale of technology development, de-risking, and maturation for emerging technologies, prior to product development.

The ATI will be holding a webinar on European funding opportunities on Wednesday 28^th February. In addition to the ATI team, we’ll be joined by Innovate UK to outline the opportunities available. Register for this event here.

For more information on the UK’s formal re-association to Horizon Europe, please visit: UK Association to Horizon Europe and Copernicus programmes: explainer – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)