Participating in Horizon Europe: Programme Guide

The HUB has been emphasising the policy dimension of the Horizon Europe Programme. One of its dimensions has always been the different set of issues that one can call of Horizon Europe’s “value-set”. In the programme guide you can find a short, objective guide to all of those issues:

• Terminology explained
• Structure and budget
• What is the Strategic Plan and why is it important?
• Horizon Europe, an impact-driven framework progamme
• European Partnerships
• Missions
• International cooperation and association
• Gender equality and inclusiveness
• Social Science and Humanities (SSH)
• Social Innovation
• Ethics and integrity
• Security
• Dissemination and exploitation of research results
• The Do No Significant Harm principle
• Open science
• Innovation Procurement
• Key Digital Technologies

New cancer data hub to support Horizon Europe mission

The European Commission launched the Knowledge Centre on Cancer, a hub to consolidate, track and provide access to cancer data, as an aid to supporting research and improving treatments. The centre is first concrete move under the Beating Cancer plan, which aims to reduce the burden of disease, and will support the cancer research mission that promises to save three million lives by 2030. See also a Science Business article on the issue.

How climate change will widen Europe’s divides

The south of the Continent will be harder hit than the north, driving a wedge into one of the European Union’s deepest fault lines. Climate change isn’t just coming for Europe. It’s coming for the European Union. Europe’s north will struggle with floods and fires, even with warming at the lowest end of expectations — the Paris Agreement limits of 1.5 or 2 degrees above the pre-industrial global average. But the south will be hammered by drought, urban heat and agricultural decline, driving a wedge into one of the European Union’s biggest political fault lines. That is the major finding from a POLITICO survey of more than 100 scientific papers, interviews with climate scientists and a leaked draft of the next report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a 4,200-page study that is science’s most advanced inquiry to date of the impacts of climate change on our world. This is a really interesting piece of journalistic science coverage. It should be read and analysed, serving as a basis for wider reflection among all of us. A good weekend read.

EU Digital COVID Certificate enters into application in the EU

As of yesterday, the EU Digital COVID Certificate Regulation enters into application. This means that EU citizens and residents will now be able to have their Digital COVID Certificates issued and verified across the EU. 21 Member States as well as Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein had already started to issue certificates ahead of today’s deadline, and five EU countries are starting today. The Commission’s work on the EU Digital COVID Certificates was led by Commissioner Didier Reynders in close cooperation with Vice-Presidents Vera Jourová and Margaritis Schinas and Commissioners Thierry Breton, Stella Kyriakides, and Ylva Johansson.

Green Light Given For Construction Of World’s Largest Radio Telescope Arrays

At a historic meeting of its Council last week, the recently formed SKA Observatory (SKAO) saw its Member States approve the start of construction of the SKA telescopes in Australia and South Africa. The two telescopes, currently designated SKA-Low and SKA-Mid, names which describe the radio frequency range they each cover, will be the two largest and most complex networks of radio telescopes ever built. Portugal participates through the project EngageSKA, led by Instituto de Telecomunicações. Check further info here and really engaging explanatory video about how this project started more than 30 years ago and how it developed.