EU-India relations have been further strengthened as India gains access to the EU’s flagship research and innovation programme.
With India and Horizon Europe working together, India, the EU, and its partners will have greater access to collaboration with Indian researchers and companies.
This will boost opportunities for scientific and technological links.
Indian researchers and organisations will have HE funding
Once the necessary procedures are complete, researchers in India will be able to apply for and receive funding from Horizon Europe’s Pillar II: ‘Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness.’ This will primarily apply to collaborative projects.
This pillar funds collaborative, multinational research and projects that address societal and technological issues, including health, digital, industry, space, climate, energy, and bioeconomy.
The association is the closest form of cooperation that the EU offers to non-EU countries through Horizon Europe, which allows for equal cooperation as if the country were an EU member in the parts of the programme covered by the agreement, while the associated countries agree to contribute financially to the programme.
For India, the agreements are expected to be signed and procedures completed in January 2027.
There are currently 23 non-EU countries associated with Horizon Europe: Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Egypt, the Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Türkiye, Tunisia, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
Horizon Europe has been boosted
€500m was allocated to Horizon Europe in September for the rest of 2026 and 2027, boosting the programme’s budget to around €14.8bn and supporting research and innovation while expanding the programme further into artificial intelligence, biodiversity, and skills.
Two new Horizon Europe calls have also been launched: Transformative Change Towards a Nature-Positive Economy and Society, with a budget of €237m, and Bridging Actions 2027, with a budget of €260m.
The former funds 11 research and innovation actions to support the EU’s biodiversity objectives and contribute to the 10% biodiversity spending target in the Horizon Europe Strategic Plan 2025-2027. The call also supports the Ocean Pact, EU Ocean Eye, Nature Restoration Regulation, Clean Industrial Deal, European Water Resilience Strategy, and the EU’s approach to integrated wildfire risk management.
The latter introduces an innovation-to-investment journey designed to strengthen the connection between research and market deployment, with sixteen actions to support advanced technologies with commercial potential, including an EU AI Media Platform for multilingual public-interest news and audiovisual media, autonomous driving in cities, research and technology infrastructures, attracting talent to Europe, and frameworks for scaling new technologies.
Read more about this additional funding for Horizon Europe here.
