UK and Switzerland snub EU and strike OWN deal after being 'held hostage' over project

Science Minister George Freeman announced that Britain is hoping to partner with the “science and innovation powerhouse” as part of his £6billion backup plan to Horizon Europe. This is the bloc’s key research and innovation programme that the UK was supposed to contribute £15billlion to over a seven-year period. This would let its scientist collaborate with European partners and access the EU’s huge pool of funding.

But Britain was banned from participating over Brexit disputes and was told it could not re-join the programme until they were resolved.

And like, Britain, Switzerland was also banned over a political feud with the bloc.

These decisions from the bloc infuriated scientists from both countries.

In an opinion piece for the Financial Times, Swiss astronomer Didier Queloz wrote: “To be blunt, politicians have decided to use participation in Horizon Europe as a bargaining chip in wider negotiations.

“If this is the way the game plays out, everybody loses.

“We risk destroying a fantastic tool that the EU has spent decades developing, by excluding two of the biggest players in the global research arena for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the programme itself.

“The tragedy is that this is so short-sighted. There can be no question that it is in our common interest to ensure that the best scientists can work across geographical boundaries.”

Luckily, Mr Freeman made contingency plans so that researchers can still access the funding from the grants they were supposed to receive from Horizon Europe.

But it appears that it is the global collaboration aspect that the scientists are also concerned about.

Mr Freeman has considered this.

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He has suggested that his “Plan B” involves working with partners outside the EU, which are scientific powerhouses like Switzerland.

This looks like it could mean collaborating with the UK’s Five Eyes partners (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US), as well as Japan and elsewhere.

Speaking to the Science and Technology Committee, Mr Freeman even agreed that universities in the US, Australia and Asia are of “better quality” than our European partners.

But Mr Freeman, who voted Remain in the EU Referendum, has not ruled out the possibility of joining Horizon Europe.

Britain’s science community has already stressed the urgency of participation.

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And today, a group of Universities and other major education groups
have launched the “Stick to Science” campaign.

This is to encourage the EU and Switzerland to be let back into Horizon Europe.

They have called for an “open and collaborative research and innovation landscape” free from political barriers.

Ludovic Thilly, chair of the executive board at Coimbra Group, said: “We cannot accept any longer that scientific cooperation be held hostage to bilateral politics.”

Martin Smith, head of the policy lab at Wellcome, told Nature: “Association is being held hostage to the bigger political impasse of the Northern Ireland protocol.

“Patience is wearing thin.”

Matt Ridley, a Brexiteer and former Conservative Peer, told Express.co.uk that the EU banned Britain to “punish” it for leaving the bloc.

“For the EU to deny Britain, probably the leading scientific country in most fields in the continent of Europe, the same kind of access countries like Georgia or Iceland have, does seem very odd.”

But Mr Ridley seemed to like the prospect of choosing our scientific collaborators.

He told Express.co.uk: “International collaboration is vital in science.

“Scientists should choose to collaborate with on the basis of “who’s the best person in this field to help me in this project’”.