ECA Special Report on Widening measures

The European Court of Auditors published on 15 June 2022 a special report under the title “Measures to widen participation in Horizon 2020 were well designed but sustainable change will mostly depend on efforts by national authorities”. To tackle the innovation divide, Horizon 2020 introduced specific widening measures to support Member States lagging behind in research and innovation. In the report, the ECA assessed whether these measures were fit for purpose and concluded that the widening measures were well-designed to address the limited participation of widening countries in R&I framework programmes, but sustainable change requires efforts at national level.

The participation in the widening measures was uneven and the funded projects, whilst starting to show promising results, face challenges in terms of complementary funding and sustainability. Therefore, ECA recommends that the Commission strengthen the use of the Policy Support Facility, aim for a more balanced participation in widening measures, facilitate the availability of complementary funding, enhance their capacity to exploit project results and improve monitoring.

The real shift depends largely on national governments, which must make R&I a priority in order to ramp up investment and reforms. Widening measures can only kick-start these countries’ progress, but on their own lack enough power to create the changes needed in national R&I ecosystems. However, the crucial factor determining a country’s performance is its national R&I investment levels and reforms. In 2020, the average investment in R&I in the EU was 2.3 % of GDP — below the 3 % target. Of the 15 widening countries, only Slovenia and Czechia invested more than 2 %.

Special web page dedicated to the report is here, ECA press release here, report itself of 63 pages can be downloaded here and the replies of the European Commission (11 pages) here.