Diana Morant highlights Horizon Europe's boost to the culture of knowledge and innovation in the Spanish productive fabric

During the event, held under the slogan 'The new horizon for Europe', Morant stressed the importance of European collaboration to face global challenges and threats and recalled that "Spain is committed to Europe, to its world leadership, through the flag of science and innovation".

The event was also attended by the Mayor of Valencia, Joan Ribó, the Regional Minister for Innovation, Universities, Science and Digital Society of the Generalitat, Carolina Pascual, and the Director General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission, Jean Eric Paquet. The latter said that Spain's commitment to science and innovation is a benchmark in the European Framework R&D&I Programme and it is expected that, in the new 2021-2027 round, our country will again achieve similar results in the exceptional Horizon 2020 indicators in terms of leadership, training and return.

This conference, organised by the Ministry of Science and Innovation in collaboration with the European Commission, is part of a programme that every two years organises a public follow-up event for companies and agents of the Spanish Science, Technology and Innovation System.

What's new in the Horizon Europe Programme?

The Horizon Europe Programme is the European Union's flagship initiative for the promotion of R&I from the conceptual phase to market introduction. With a budget of 95.5 billion euros, of which 5.4 billion comes from the NextGenerationEU instrument, the programme complements national and regional R&I funding.

The current programme is based on three pillars: the Excellent Science pillar; the Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness pillar, which encompasses the former themes of the Societal Challenges and Industrial Leadership 2020 pillars, with a new cluster structure designed to facilitate a multidisciplinary approach aimed at maximising synergies; and the new Innovative Europe pillar. This last pillar, led by the European Innovation Council (EIC), will centralise open thematic calls and focus on building a European innovation environment.

Among the new features of Horizon Europe is also the new approach to European Partnerships, partnerships between countries that will play a leading role in particular in Pillar 2, Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness. It is estimated that 50% of this pillar will be realised through these partnerships.

As a novelty, Horizon Europe also includes the Research Missions, which will be focused on responding to the challenges posed by citizens through this new model to materialise R&D&I with a social and economic impact in areas of interest to the EU and its citizens.

H2020 programme results

The conference also took stock of the previous Framework Programme, H2020, in which Spanish entities coordinated 17% of the funded collaborative R&D&I projects.

Spain is the fourth country that receives the most funds from H2020, behind only Germany, the United Kingdom and France. Specifically, the total grant obtained by Spanish entities to carry out research and innovation activities amounted to 6,114 million euros. Morant pointed out that these figures confirm that our country is capable of competing at the highest European level, both from the public and private sectors.

Bilateral meetings in the framework of the Conference

The Ministry of Science and Innovation manages the participation of Spanish entities in the EU Framework Programme through the Centre for Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI) for technology and innovation (Industrial Leadership and Social Challenges) and of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) for science and basic research (Excellent Science), providing information, advice, training, accompaniment and support via expert technical teams and other services such as the Spanish Science and Technology Office (SOST) in Brussels, with the aim of maximising Spanish participation in European programmes and the success rate in their competitive calls.

FECYT supports the Ministry of Science and Innovation in the field of European Missions, participating in the coordination and development of the working meetings that the different National Mirror Groups of the five missions have held in parallel to the conference. The purpose of these meetings was to identify the strengths and capacities of the Spanish R&D&I system and to share with the European Commission good practices and the state of adaptation of these new instruments at national level, suggesting mechanisms and actions to facilitate the proper implementation of successful measures in our country.

Awards ceremony for the first edition of the Finnova-Technovation Challenges

Within the framework of this conference, the Minister for Science and Innovation presented the prizes for the first edition of the Finnova-Technovation Challenges, a technological entrepreneurship competition for girls organised by the non-profit association Technovation.

The Senior Technovation Girls Comunidad Valenciana team from the ABECÉ school in Gandia has received this recognition for the development of the COMEN 2.0 app, a digital programme that promotes the reuse of organic waste and the reduction of environmental impact.

Morant highlighted the capacity, effort and scientific and innovative vocation of the award winners and underlined the importance of the award to make visible the talent and scientific and entrepreneurial leadership of women, which is essential to build a greener, more prosperous, equitable and just future.

Visit to the company S2 Grupo

During her visit to Valencia, Morant visited the facilities of the cybersecurity company S2 Grupo. She specifically toured the company's Security Operations Centre and Industrial Cybersecurity Laboratory. This laboratory has equipment operating in different sectors in which they are specialists, such as transport, with a real charging station, an ICU for the defence and protection of health facilities and patients, and digital twins of industrial systems of all kinds.

Last, she visited the CSIRT- CV, the Valencian Community's incident response centre, which has become a successful model to be implemented in other Spanish regions

Non official translation