The ETH Board hopes that an agreement on institutional issues will soon be achieved in order to stabilise the relations with the EU. Indeed, Switzerland’s science hub benefits from stable, reliable bilateral agreements between the country and its EU partners.
Concerning participation in EU programmes, the ETH Board is reiterating its stance:
- Participating in EU framework programmes for research and innovation is of vital importance to the ETH Domain. This latest milestone between Switzerland and the EU allows exploratory talks for the association to Horizon Europe to begin immediately. The ETH Board warmly welcomes this positive development and calls for Switzerland’s full association to Horizon Europe as soon as possible.
- Switzerland’s association to Horizon Europe must be kept separate from the other negotiations between Switzerland and the EU. This is necessary to achieve a swift association. The European scientific community has also been calling for this decoupling since 2021 as part of the “Stick to Science” campaign.
- The conditions for participation in EU programmes must be clarified as quickly as possible and communicated well in advance, in order to ensure maximum involvement of the Swiss scientific and industrial community in the Horizon Europe package.
- The Swiss transitional measures and financial guarantees must be maintained until Switzerland is associated. All opportunities for participation at EU level must be accessible for Swiss participants, either by association or via Swiss compensation measures.
- In this context, the ETH Board welcomes the efforts made by SERI to limit the negative impact of non-association to EU programmes since 2021, as well as those made by the institutions implementing Swiss schemes.
In light of this, the ETH Board is pleased that association to Horizon Europe remains the prime objective of the Swiss government.
