Easier EU-US collaboration in Horizon 2020
By Ingemar Pongratz
Recently, the European Commission signed an agreement with the USA regarding the administrative formalities for collaboration between Horizon 2020 projects and US based research teams and their home universities. This will lead to Easier EU-US collaboration in Horizon 2020 project in the future.
Before the agreement was signed, US based researchers that wished to officially collaborate with Horizon 2020 teams faced several administrative hurdles, even in the cases where the US partners did not receive funding. This was a result of the Grant Agreement. The Grant Agreement is based on EU jurisdiction and naturally US researchers, specially from the public sector are not allowed to sign an agreement under foreign jurisdiction and to follow European law.
The only exception was the EU HEALTH priority where US researchers could benefit from funding, due to EU NIH agreement that allows for mutual participation in the funding schemes.
The current agreement allows that US based team and that do not receive EU funding are able to approach Horizon 2020 projects and agree on a suitable collaboration framework. This mutual framework will allow US groups to follow US rules and EU researchers to follow European regulations.
This agreement will thus simplify research collaboration and researcher exchange between Europe and the USA and may serve as the foundation for deeper collaboration.
In the cases where US participants are expect to receive EU financing, the US partners are still expected to sign the EU Grant Agreement which will have to negotiated. As stated before, US research groups are able to join Horizon 2020 Health projects and in these project they will need to sign the EU Grant Agreement.
Ingemar Pongratz is founder of Fenix Scientific AB / Pongratz Consulting. We help enterprises, universities and other organization to plan and apply for public funding sources in particular from European sources such as Horizon 2020. If you wish to discuss our assistance to your project proposals do not hesitate to contact us, either through the Online Registration form or by email to:
Ingemar.Pongratz () pongratzconsulting.com
Stockholm-panorama-by-Ingemar Pongratz
