YERUN, together with other leading European university networks and research organisations, welcomes the momentum created by the European Parliament’s work on Horizon Europe 2028–2034 (FP10) and the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF), which has helped clarify the debate on the future funding for Research & Innovation (R&I) and competitiveness.

Ahead of the Competitiveness Council meeting on 28- 29 May 2026 and the General Affairs Council meeting on 16 June, we encourage the Council to carefully consider the European Parliament’s proposals and move towards coherent, ambitious and operational positions on FP10 and the ECF.

Europe cannot afford prolonged divergence of positions between EU institutions. At a time when Europe’s competitiveness, resilience and industrial renewal require decisive EU action, delayed progress would create uncertainty for researchers, institutions, companies and innovation ecosystems. Speed and quality must go hand in hand: the objective should be timely convergence towards a coherent, operational and future-oriented framework.

The Commission also has an important role to play in supporting this convergence. Having presented its proposal, it should now help build constructive compromises between the EU institutions, taking account of the advances made in the European Parliament which address many of the concerns raised by the research and innovation community.

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Europe’s competitiveness will depend not only on strengthening existing centres of excellence, but also on mobilising excellent research and innovation capacity across Europe’s diverse regions, including emerging and non-metropolitan research ecosystems. In this sense, distributed excellence should be recognised as a strategic condition for Europe’s long-term resilience, innovation capacity and global competitiveness. Adam Kola, YERUN Vice President

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Signatories

CESAER – https://www.cesaer.org/ 

Coimbra Group – https://www.coimbra-group.eu/ 

EUA – https://www.eua.eu/  

EU-LIFE – https://eu-life.eu/ 

The Guild – https://www.the-guild.eu/ 

LERU – https://www.leru.org/ 

YERUN – https://yerun.eu/