Receive free UK politics updates
We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest UK politics news every morning.
The UK has struck a deal to rejoin the EU’s Horizon research programme, according to officials in London and Brussels, in a move welcomed by academics and businesses across Europe.
Rishi Sunak, UK prime minister, is expected to confirm on Thursday that Britain will sign up as an associate member of the €95.5bn programme, drawing a line under months of tense negotiations.
Horizon is the world’s largest multilateral research programme, bringing together companies and scientists from more than 40 countries exploring areas from climate change to cancer to artificial intelligence.
Sunak has personally overseen the details of the deal, having told aides he was sceptical about whether Horizon offered the UK value for money. The agreement will mark a further deepening of post-Brexit UK-EU ties.
“Our priority and preference is to associate to Horizon,” Sunak told MPs on Wednesday. “But we want to make sure that this is on terms that are both right for the British taxpayer and for British science and research.”
Sunak’s allies said the Horizon deal built on improved relations between London and Brussels following the Windsor deal in February that ended a bitter stand-off over post-Brexit trading rules for Northern Ireland.
“This is part of that reset,” said one. “It also shows what you can achieve with hard work.” Downing Street declined to comment.
The UK negotiated “associate membership” of the Horizon programme as part of the 2020 Trade and Cooperation Agreement, but was blocked from taking up its membership because of protracted disputes over the so-called Northern Ireland protocol.
William Bain, the head of trade policy at the British Chambers of Commerce said the group had told ministers that joining Horizon would attract investment and deepen international collaboration in science, research and higher education.
“If an associate membership deal for the UK is confirmed, this will provide much needed certainty and kick-start new research opportunities for key strength areas of the UK economy, such as life sciences,” he added.
Initial optimism earlier this year that the two sides could swiftly reach a deal foundered on disputes over how the UK’s financial contributions to the seven-year scheme should be adjusted to take into account the two years from which the UK had been excluded.
The UK Treasury said it would not reaccede to Horizon unless the UK received “fair value for money” given the UK contributed £2bn annually.
Negotiations focused partly on the financial “correction mechanism” which determined what happened if the UK extracted less in value from the programme than it contributed in payments.
It also emerged that since the UK had concluded its own agreement on Horizon during the 2020 Brexit trade deal negotiations, other nations — including rich ones such as Israel and Turkey — had obtained more favourable terms from the European Commission.
As a member of the EU, the UK frequently received more than it contributed to Horizon programmes as a result of the grant-winning prowess of its universities, but as an associate member this is ruled out.
“It is important that science collaborates in an efficient manner,” said Martin Smith, head of policy at the Wellcome Trust, the charitable foundation. “A Horizon Europe deal will mean the UK can regain its rightful claim to being part of the global endeavour to solve the big scientific challenges of our time.”
EU academics also welcomed the move. “It is excellent news for researchers on both sides of the Channel who will be able to combine their efforts at a time when research is key to the competitiveness of Europe,” said Arancha González, dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po.