The UK government’s announcement that it had rejoined the European Union’s Horizon Europe science funding programme was cause for celebration among researchers in Britain and across Europe. But what will the terms of the deal – and the long time the UK was out of the programme – mean for those researchers and the country more generally?
The UK had been a full member of the EU’s flagship research and innovation programme until the country formally left the bloc in 2020. Following lengthy negotiations, the UK has now joined Horizon as an associate member – an arrangement open to non-EU countries.
