Thangam Debbonaire – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Thangam Debbonaire on 2016-09-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the extent to which UK universities are being excluded from joint funding applications to EU funding bodies by other EU universities.

Joseph Johnson

The European Commission has made it clear that while the UK remains a member of the EU, proposals from, or including, UK applicants must be treated in the same way as applications from other Member States including for collaborations under Horizon 2020 and Erasmus+.

In addition, the HM Treasury announcement on 13th August brought clarity on continuity of research funding by stating that competitively bid for projects applied for before the UK departs the EU would be underwritten by the Treasury for the life of the project.

The Government is vigilant and will continue to monitor any problems in this area. To aid this we have set up a mailbox where specific instances should be sent: research@beis.gov.uk.

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