MEP Carla Tavares from the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament discusses how to enhance the European Union’s research and innovation through the Multiannual Financial Framework
The next EU budget – or Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2028-2034, as it is formally known – must square an almost impossible circle: supporting the EU strategic priorities, expanding competitiveness, resilience, and defence and building up innovation and research, while at the same time repaying the NextGenerationEU funds, – all within an EU budget, that, in real terms, is the same size as the current one. In a nutshell, the same resources to finance more priorities.
Rebuilding the EU’s innovation capacity for the age of artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, or industrial decarbonisation takes time, a bold strategy, resilience, and a lot of money.
Funding Europe’s research and innovation pipeline
Europe’s research pipeline still faces a chronic funding bottleneck. The European Parliament insists that funding for research and innovation (R&I), must be significantly increased and aligned with the Union’s strategic priorities, while remaining merit-based and excellence-driven. The aim is not another reshuffle of envelopes, but a coherent R&I ecosystem – from blue-sky research to market deployment.
To meet the 3% of GDP R&D target by 2030, the EU and national governments must ensure enough resources to finance high-quality and credible projects throughout the innovation cycle. The Parliament’s position reflects a broader consensus: Europe’s growth model will depend on its capacity to translate scientific excellence into industrial leadership.
Fragmentation between national and EU programmes reduces real impact. The Commission’s proposed Competitiveness Coordination Tool could help align industrial, research, and investment policies between the EU and its capitals. The Parliament is open to the idea – but draws a red line: democratic oversight. Any new steering mechanism must grant the Parliament a full decision-making role to ensure that budgetary choices are informed by evidence and long-term strategic objectives, rather than short-term national reflexes.
This principle also applies to the new National and Regional Partnership Plans, inspired by the Recovery and Resilience Facility. These plans could link investment to reforms and milestones, modernising cohesion and agricultural policies. However, for this model to work, regions must retain a genuine voice, national-level reforms cannot condition sub-national investments, and the European Parliament must strengthen its oversight – otherwise, flexibility risks sliding into renationalisation.
European Commission research and innovation priorities
Under the Commission’s proposal, the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF) would merge twelve existing programmes into four windows – Clean Transition & Industrial Decarbonisation, Digital Leadership, Health & Bioeconomy, and Defence & Space. It would span the entire innovation lifecycle, utilising grants, loans, equity, and guarantees to transform ideas into scalable technologies.
We welcome this consolidation, provided that Horizon Europe and other excellence-based instruments remain autonomous yet coordinated with ECF priorities. The Fund’s single rulebook and performance-based logic could create a more coherent industrial and innovation policy – one that de-risks private investment through InvestEU and a more ambitious EIB Group mandate.
A profound technological shift is underway. AI and quantum computing could multiply productivity, transform security, and redefine scientific discovery – but they also pose challenges to reliability, ethics, and sovereignty. The next MFF should, therefore, fund research into the safe application of digital technologies and help citizens, workers and businesses to acquire the skills to use them effectively. For this, a social window in ECF is absolutely essential.
This means mobilising European Social Fund Plus (ESF+), Erasmus+, and up- and reskilling programmes alongside R&I funding. Parliament’s line is clear: digital sovereignty depends as much on human capital as on technology itself.
The EU’s next budget shaping future research and innovation
The EU’s budget must become more flexible, able to react to crises and shifting priorities. The Commission’s proposal to reduce the number of headings and integrate crisis instruments goes in the right direction. But flexibility must not translate into opacity. Annual budget procedures must regain relevance, and the Parliament’s role must expand to ensure that flexibility is matched by accountability – especially where the Commission gains discretion over spending programmes or EU-level borrowing.
Europe must transition from fragmented projects to innovation platforms and networks, including AI and quantum testbeds, cross-border data and compute infrastructures, interoperable standards, and open industrial alliances. Directly managed EU funding should focus on such cross-border public goods, where the European scale makes a difference. Investment in digital, energy, and transport infrastructure under the Connecting Europe Facility should more than double, turning connectivity into the backbone of competitiveness.
However, all this cannot be built on cuts or reduced resources. It must be built on ambition and adequate resources. More priorities require a bigger budget. Even with modest growth to 1.26% of GNI, much of the increase will be absorbed by debt repayments. Without new own resources – from ETS, CBAM, or targeted levies on high-turnover corporations – there will be little fresh money for innovation or infrastructure. Europe cannot be a global leader in research and innovation with a timid strategy and tight budgets. If it wants to remain a credible worldwide actor and borrower, it must broaden its revenue base and invest jointly in its future.
If the next MFF follows this direction – scaling up research, coordinating policies, investing in people, and aligning flexibility with accountability – Europe could close its innovation gap and turn global shocks into drivers of renewal.
Innovation is Europe’s most renewable resource. The task now is to invest in it – at scale, with excellence, and with purpose.
