The United Kingdom will join the European Union’s satellite programme for Earth observation and Horizon Europe with a rebate of its financial contribution to compensate for the years it has missed, according to a Thursday (7 September) announcement.
After months of negotiations over London’s annual contributions, the UK and the EU have found a political agreement, so Britain can join again the programmes it had left as a result of Brexit.
These include Copernicus, which observes and monitors the planet’s environmental evolution via satellites from space and contributes to disaster management and pollution monitoring.
The UK has not paid its €721 million contributions to the space programme under the 2021-2027 multi-annual budget. Negotiations over the deal were stalled over the past three years as both sides argued over implementing the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Under Thursday’s deal, the UK’s contribution to Copernicus will total €154 million a year, or €616 million until 2027, EURACTIV understands.
The Commission’s communiqué mentions an “estimate” of “almost €2.6 billion per year on average for Horizon Europe and Copernicus.
After the signing of the Windsor Framework, which resolved the disagreements between London and Brussels on the Northern Ireland protocol, the UK hoped that their financial contribution to the programmes would reflect the fact they had missed out on the services for some years, a UK government spokesperson told EURACTIV at the time.
Win for the Brits
Britain’s financial contribution will be re-calibrated because the UK did not participate from 2021 onwards, as initially planned. The UK government will, therefore, benefit from a three-year rebate.
“The European Commission and UK Government have also agreed appropriate terms regarding the UK’s financial contribution for the Multiannual Financial Framework 2021-2027 reflecting the fact that UK researchers did not participate in Horizon Europe or Copernicus from their beginning in 2021,” the joint statement reads.
The association with Copernicus “will provide the UK’s earth observation sector with access to unique data – valuable to helping with early flood and fire warnings, for example – and with the ability to bid for contracts, which they haven’t been able to access for three years”, 10 Downing Street said in a press release.
In their joint statement, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed that the UK will also have access to EU Space Surveillance and Tracking services.
Sunak added that the agreement on Horizon Europe includes “a new automatic clawback that protects the UK as participation recovers from the effects of the last two and a half years. It means the UK will be compensated should UK scientists receive significantly less money than the UK puts into the programme.”
The European Commission is looking to work on a European SST service, as laid out in its Space and Security communication published last March.
[Edited by Benjamin Fox/ Alice Taylor]
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Source: euractiv.com
