Horizon 2020

The Review of Forward-looking Activities (FLAs) undertaken in recent years at national, European and international level in this area, indicates that while the H2020 proposals on climate action, resource efficiency and raw materials aim to address a highly relevant set of themes, H2020’s proposed approach and the mechanisms for implementation need to be better specified, to ensure that an effective framework for addressing the grand societal challenges is put in place.

The first challenge to be addressed within the current design of H2020 is how to network more closely the three analytical dimensions chosen – inclusion, security, innovations – and clarify better the different perspectives and possible readings ascribed to each of the dimensions. As an example, inclusion related to migrations don’t have just to do with people coming to Europe but also with Europeans leaving Europe, security is not just related to preventing something bad from happening it also deals with what might destroy positive dimensions like freedom of speech and privacy. When analysing the H2020 point 6 on “Inclusion, Innovation and Security” one-dimensional perspectives are much more present than multi-dimensional ones and each of the three areas is very much thought as non-networkable with the other two. Such a choice in the design of the H2020 proposal constitutes a general challenge because it might limit the possible contributions by research in social-economic sciences and humanities to the proposed objectives.