UK Science and a possible Brexit

To misquote Monty Python: what has the EU ever done for you?

Quite a lot! is the answer according to Scientists for EU, a grass-roots campaign group that launched this month. Although science won’t spring to mind for most people when they think of the EU, our membership does significantly impact UK science and engineering, in good and bad ways.

Most obviously is research funding. The EU’s main research programme, Horizon2020, will invest around €80 billion into research over the next five years. It is distributed to academics in universities, hospitals, and research institutes. And some of it is earmarked to support innovative small and medium sized businesses too. The UK is pretty good at attracting this funding, with only Germany winning more from Horizon2020’s predecessor, FP7. However, if you weight funding won by the UK’s excellence in research – judged by citation impact – it receives less than you would expect it to.

A key feature of EU research funding is its focus on encouraging and supporting collaboration between Member States. This is great for researchers looking to team up with their continental colleagues or share expensive equipment. It also makes things like international clinical trials much easier to get up and running. Pan-European clinical trials are also helped by the EU’s homogenised regulation. Although this is not always true. EU regulations for the use of personal data, genetically modified organisms, and exposure to radiation in the workplace have all caused headaches for scientists over the years. Even for clinical trials, the 2001 legislation, which until recently governed clinical trials, was widely condemned for being inflexible and adding bureaucracy. It was finally replaced in 2014 after years of negotiation. Membership also permits scientists to travel freely between Member States. As a result, around 18% of academic staff in our universities are from the EU, compared to about 11% from the rest of the world. This brings new skills and ideas into the UK’s research environment.

So is UK science better off in or out of the EU? There are certainly pros and cons to membership. And no-one really knows what being out would mean – we might still get access to Horizon2020, we might have a louder voice on our own, and we might be able to opt in to the regulations we like whilst ignoring to ones that we don’t. Equally, our researchers could be shut out of collaboration and our universities could lose a valuable source of research income. CaSE is not campaigning to stay in or leave the EU. But we do believe that people need as much information as possible to help them make up their minds. So over the coming year we will be producing evidence and facilitating the debate.

Author: Dr Martin Turner is Policy Advisor, Campaign for Science and Engineering at CaSE, the Campaign for Science and Engineering.