Despite Brexit, the coronavirus crisis should make us even more determined to ensure the UK continues to be at the heart of pan-European science collaborations writes Professor Marja Makarow.
The Covid-19 pandemic has, understandably, knocked Brexit off the front pages. But the UKs decision to leave the EU is perhaps more relevant than ever.
Firstly, it means the UK will probably be towards the back of the queue when a vaccine is eventually ready to be rolled out, while secondly – and more crucially for broader collaboration in science – it’s highlighting the impact of UK expertise being excluded from international research programmes.
Current best estimates put a delivery date for a vaccine 12-18 months away – beyond the Brexit transition period – meaning that the UK is likely to be outside the authority of the EU’s medicines regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The frantic rush to be first in line to secure the vaccine has already prompted President Trump to try to secure exclusive supplies for the US, while the EU also wants to ensure its member states are at the front of the queue.
Both will offer more lucrative markets to a drug company or vaccine maker, with populations of 330 million in the US and 440 million in the EU, compared to just 66 million in the UK. The pandemic has already delayed the ongoing Brexit negotiations – if they are further delayed and there is no alignment of some form with the EMA approval process, drugmakers will likely be minded to prioritise the EU market and seek EMA ratification first, rather than submitting a vaccine to the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency for approval.
So will this conundrum, and the potential fall-out, make the UK government think twice about cutting further ties with EU science?
Disease respects no borders, so collaboration across country and political lines is essential for tackling issues like Covid-19
The UK has a proud record of cutting-edge research and discovery in science and medicine. The likes of Sir Alexander Fleming (discoverer of penicillin), Dr Patrick Steptoe and Dr Robert Edwards (pioneers of IVF) and Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield (inventor of the CT scanner) have been responsible for some of the most ground-breaking discoveries and inventions that have revolutionised healthcare. Scientists in Europe, like myself, have long valued collaborations with our UK counterparts because of such expertise. But last month, Christian Ehler, a leading German MEP, expressed the fears that many scientists across Europe share: that the disruption from the pandemic will lead to a failure to see out a Brexit deal by the end of the year, thereby isolating UK experts from future research programmes.
As Ehler said: “Current events only underline how important it is to have UK in the EU research programme. We should do all we can do to get an agreement this year. UK researchers are already in a limbo state and are being excluded from consortia. This would get worse if there’s no deal.”
Disease respects no borders, so collaboration across country and political lines is essential for tackling issues like Covid-19. Many successful clinical breakthroughs in the past have been because of international partnerships and providing open access to fresh research data. Fleming may have made the initial discovery of penicillin, but teams from the United States got involved later, making it an international effort. After the Ebola outbreak, collaboration between scientists across three continents resulted in a vaccine being developed. The UKs scientific expertise therefore runs the risk of being sidelined at a critical point.
The state of limbo, borne from the Brexit talks, means that, as Ehler pointed out, leading UK scientists have already missed out on European funding – such as the €164 million the Commission announced earlier this month for companies with technologies and innovations that could help in treating, testing, monitoring or other aspects of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The experience of Switzerland may provide a salutary tale for the UK. A country with associated membership of many EU programmes, including science, Switzerland voted to curb immigration in 2014 and soon found itself locked out of Horizon, the EU’s research and innovation funding stream. In the two years it took for the dispute to be resolved, the Swiss government stepped in to fill the funding gaps – just as the British government has pledged to do – but the impact on the Swiss research was significant, with a net loss in funding estimated by the Swiss government at €686 million.
Topping up lost funding, however, cannot compensate for the loss of crucial collaborative networks. After 2014, Swiss researchers were frozen out of European research consortia, and the stream of scientists moving to Switzerland stopped. Levels of collaboration with the EU dropped ten-fold, according to EPFL, the research institute. Switzerland had ranked seventh in terms of EU collaborations, but it fell to 24th place after 2014.
The UK government has said that it wants to retain access to major pan-European research programmes at associate level, while, at the same time, restricting freedom of movement that is a fundamental value of the European Union. That might be difficult to attain, given that the EU has made it clear that the UK can’t cherry pick what it wants to be a part of, and what it doesn’t.
The hope among European scientists, however, is that Covid-19 may just focus minds that there are bigger things afoot here. An old rule of thumb was that pandemics like this happen about three times every century. But, since the turn of the millennium, the world has already confronted a raft of viral shocks, including SARS in 2002 and 2003, H1N1 in 2009, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014 to 2016, Zika in 2015 and Dengue fever in 2016. So, even when we turn the tide on Covid-19, the likelihood of another emerging infectious disease impacting us is high. The world will be infinitely better placed for tackling such diseases if the UK and EU are able to continue to collaborate effectively.
Professor Marja Makarow is Member of the Strategic Board of the University of Geneva and Chair of Technology Academy Finland awarding the Millennium Technology Prize for groundbreaking innovations
And so ends the party political broadcast on behalf of the EU.
For a scientist, the Professor has such a narrow EUcentric view of the world ‘ …. it’s highlighting the impact of UK expertise being excluded from international research programmes.’, she obviously means EU and can’t imagine there is more to the world than that! and of course obsessing over EU regulators.
The idea that by leaving the EU and the Horizon project we will be cut off from science and fall into the wilderness spurned and ignored by the worlds vaccine makers is ridiculous.
The Horizon project has been going apparently in some form or other since 1984 and in that time, can you say that the EU as been transformed into the world technology power? of course not. Horizon has attracted its own fair share of criticism over the years. it cannot be beyond the wit of man to devise something better, that delivers more science and opens our universities and companies up to collaboration with the wider world – which can only benefit us as a country. let us not forget that the majority of the best universities and tech companies are not even in the EU.
Back to Covid, who knows, it could be a UK organisation that comes up with the first workable vaccine? i see plenty of positive reports in the various press on the progress of UK companies and research centres. but say it isn’t one of ours, and it is the USA then if it has been through their approval process then outside the EMA we can recognise the USA’s approval straight away, we would have that flexibility, after all, if covid is really as dangerous as it is cracked up to be, why would you not accept the USA’s approval and help save lives here?
This idea that we are missing out on EU funding, is even more daft. while in the EU any monies we ‘won’ were from a pot we had already contributed and given the huge discrepancy in the money put in and taken out (i.e. far more in than back), combined with the increases in R&D proposed by UK gov, there will be more money in the pot generally and a big wide world to work with and who knows, perhaps we can even work with other EU universities outside of Horizon, or do their regulations prohibit it?
And as for the Swiss experience, i note that the Swiss universities are still generally higher regarded as for R&D than their EU counterparts.
Does this work using the same theory, that Germany used when it banned the export of PPE and relevant medical equipement (even within the EU) when things started to heat up with the Corona virus? “We are all in this together” has nothing to do with the EUs way of doing things.
i wonder how much of the 164 million euro will go into the work and how much will get lost in EU bureaucracy and rules for rules sake.
Maybe with less restriction the UK can get on with finding the solution and applying it to the 66 million even quicker if our own experts can be the one ones to establish the criteria needed to be met rather than a committee’s committee that needs approval of a commission that requires the approval of a president. of the EU.
Your example of Switzerland prompts the question; how much of this Horizon science funding is/was contingent on climate-change?
And since emissions of CO2 have now dropped by more than dreamed or hoped, what would the savings be? And whilst a national government has the flexibility to adjust the programmes and budget to suit, would the EU be quick enough to allow such changes, or to agree a reduction in the budget?
And as an aside, I can’t see your case for suspending Brexit, other than as a special interest plea. The UK has already withdrawn from the EU’s proto-federal government, has patched up the science funding gap,. All that is now required is an agreement over details, which can be achieved via skype, etc., and ought not to be stalled by Covid .
So what is being said “Politics” will be in the way of progress!!
Germany has been the most successful country tackling the coronavirus so all this puffed out chest talk coming from people who wanted to take our country back to the nineteen seventies the point when we begged to join the EU but were rejected twice by the French is meaningless bilge. Grow up and open your eyes they have far better infrastructure than the overpriced Uk model far fewer restrictions on industries than the constant red tape from Westminster. I employed 15 people in engineering during the period from 1975 to 2015 don’t tell me about who produces bureaucracy. Westminster has been at the heart of destroying our engineering industry and that is now why we have very little left. Put down your news papers and look around how many machine tool companies do we have, what do we make in terms of food processing machinery, printing machinery if we did not import we would be in a poor position. We have a small high tech industry which is doing very well but most of our wealth comes from the financial sector and service industries. It is time to look forward in this country not travelling back to 1974
>i wonder how much of the 164 million euro will go into the work and how much will get lost in EU bureaucracy and rules for rules sake.<
Far less, I would suggest than is the case for a little country trying to make its way in the world alone.
The Professor is absolutely correct. In its research activities over half a century, the UK benefits enormously from EU funding, EU personnel and collaboration with other centres of excellence in the EU. A single country cannot match the funding that is available to a consortium of nations via the EU and there is a vast amount of pure and applied research taking place as a result of EU funding. Nothing however has inhibited the UK from collaborating simultaneously with centres of academic excellence elsewhere; but removing one of the cornerstones of UK research funding will make that far more difficult.
It seems to me likely that Brexit will precipitate a brain drain of our talented academics to EU and other universities, while the UK will be a far less attractive country in which an academic might choose to establish a career.
The idea that we are simply getting back money that we have already put in is yet another expression of the Brexiter innumeracy that fails to recognise all the benefits of membership which extend far beyond subscriptions and rebates. This is the reason why leaving is projected to cost the UK between 2 and 8% of GDP, or about £40 to 160 billion PER YEAR.
It is true that there is some excellent work happening in the UK on CoVID-19 vaccines, as there is in the USA, Europe and elsewhere. Many researchers take the view that we may need several vaccines simultaneously in order to manage this pandemic. The researchers themselves favour international cooperation and an example announced only today is the collaboration between GlaxoSmithKline (UK) and Sofida (F), the type of collaboration which is facilitated if both countries are EU members and members of the European Medicines Agency.
Anybody who’s ever rowed will know that cooperation and subordination to the whole is the only way to make a world beating crew. Elite individuals can make it on their own in a single scull and pairs, but when it comes to fours & eights everyone has to work with the other, to enable a top class performance which when it comes produces such an adrenaline rush that it sweeps through your body to euphoria.
And so it should be with the UK and its many invested joint ventures, from which we will slowly be excluded.
BREXIT is a POLITICAL failure which will leave the UK behind in almost every Social, Technological & Scientific indicator, which will impact on the fabric of our country and quality of life. Britian has always been regarded as the dirty man of Europe and those of us who have ventured outside the UK into Europe understand that label.
BREXIT must be turned around policy by policy until our proper re-integration into Europe has been re established.
If we fail the Uk will be destined to be a museum at the end of the China belt & rail and a port of call for the America’s.
We will not regain our greatness without the genuine integration into Europe where our wealth and encouraged developments came from.
Any Nation that does not “own” its essential needs such as medicine, power, water and other services will never grow, prosper or have a defence against such emergencies. This “collective” approach can be seen to be falling apart within the EU, and the resultants can be seen in the UK, we were nearly on our knees. Where are the “new” Engineers coming from? where are the ideas that will carry us forward? Better we left and started to struggle to get on our feet, before we became a waste land.
Come on Engineer, give us a rest from your Brexit scare stories. Project Fear is over and done!
Brexit will happen, in spite of Coronavirus.
As an aside, the EU don’t seem to be setting any example with regard to their co operative financial or health policies while the pandemic is happening.
So what do we have to lose?
Brexit December 31st 2020.
Reply to Andy Pye 15th April 2020 at 4:29 pm – apologies, the reply function doesn’t seem to want to work for me
regards these comments
‘it seems to me likely that Brexit will precipitate a brain drain of our talented academics to EU and other universities, while the UK will be a far less attractive country in which an academic might choose to establish a career.’
Why? UK has some of the best universities in the world – put the money in why wouldn’t they want to make a career here? and if there is a brain drain – i don’t think there will be – but if there is, far more likely that they will go to the USA and not the EU.
‘The idea that we are simply getting back money that we have already put in is yet another expression of the Brexiter innumeracy that fails to recognise all the benefits of membership which extend far beyond subscriptions and rebates.’
You can hardly say that we get all this money from the EU then start complaining about brexitier innumeracy for pointing out we get back less than we put in, if we are getting back less than put in we have had no money from the EU!!
Anyway, what benefits precisely are these then ?
the benefit of being £12bn out of pocket each year on our subs? or the anti scientific precautionary principle regulatory approach which is more likely to impoverish us the longer we stay bound by regulations made using it? or trade possibly, where we over 20 odd years the value of UK exports to the EU have dropped from c.60% to c. 40% of our total, which is a reversions to closer to where we were before we joined? where we are the only one of 2 EU countries which have greater value of their exports to rest of the world than in the EU and the other is Cyprus, it rather indicates that economically we are an outlier within the EU – and we’d be better off organising our trade affairs to take advantage of the estimated 90% of world growth that is expected will take place over next 20 years that will be out side of the EU.
And that’s not even mentioning that the great diminution of the UK’s engineering and manufacturing sector all took place while in the EU and its precursors, no?hardly a ringing endorsement of our time in the EU.
‘This is the reason why leaving is projected to cost the UK between 2 and 8% of GDP, or about £40 to 160 billion PER YEAR.’
You are quoting the totally biased, one eyed and discredited Treasury reports? the ones commissioned by George Osborne and Phil Hammond’s teams? those guys who only wanted one message – EU great, leaving EU bad…. those reports? surely you must know that with any model, rubbish in ,you get rubbish out and none of the scenario of doom financial models assumed any kind of sensible response by the UK government. After the Treasury dropped their first model and assumed the Purdoe University model, a different set of assumptions applied to that model demonstrated the potential for a £140bn a year boost (economists for free trade)! you need to be a bit more scrutinising of reports you agree with or which to support your own world view.
Economically we would be better off having a FTA with the USA – a bigger economy than the EU’s much vaunted single market and no requirement ‘for ever closer union’ and far more sensible regulatory environment.
Andy Pye and Mr. Davies argue their opposing views forcefully, but they miss the salient point; i.e. our LOW R&I spend and historical failure to own and commercialise the IPR. (economics is not a science!) This problem is peculiarly British. e.g. . .
“The UK is world leading in the development of intellectual property in PEMD and this makes it an attractive base for Foreign Direct Investment. However, almost all is taken to concept without recourse to manufacturing, which tends to happen elsewhere.”
http://www.ukri.org/innovation/industrial-strategy-challenge-fund/driving-the-electric-revolution/
“In its research activities over half a century, the UK benefits enormously from EU funding.” But only on ‘blue skies’ research. We Brits are clueless on applied R&I. The Tories killed off the CEGB (3,000 R&D staff) to put a rip-off monopoly in its place. National Grid spends a pathetic 0.1% of revenue on R&I. Their 2009 ‘Going Green’ scenario (i.e. NO energy storage) was doomed to failure:-
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/16/low-demand-for-power-causes-problems-for-national-grid
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/last-weeks-poll-national-infrastructure-commission/
“The diminution of the UK’s engineering and manufacturing sector took place while in the EU.” A self-inflicted wound, since the ‘80s. Germany is in the EU! Their state/private sector collaboration works – our counter-productive political/economic strategy is set in ideological stone:-
“investment should be driven by demonstrated support from business.”
“public support should not directly subsidise industry’s near-market research.”
Ref: Science & Innovation Ten-Year Investment Framework. Par. 4.12.
I can assure them, from past experience, UK governments of all complexions have used the EU as an excuse to restrict R&I spending. Education, industry, innovation and science ministers have all rejected Germany’s good example of high state spending: “72 institutes – the Fraunhofer Society for the Advancement of Applied Research (which David Willetts claims isn’t the British way of doing things!) – each focusing on different fields of applied science. With some 28,000 employees and an annual research budget of about €2.8bn, it is the biggest organization for applied R&D services in Europe.” The German political philosophy of public sector involvement has made a life-or-death difference in response to Covid-19.
“Germany spends a higher proportion of GDP on higher education, there are more academic staff in universities and Germany is ahead in spending on R&D, both from public and private sources, investing 3% of GDP compared with 1.7% in the UK.” – You do the math!
Annual GDP: Germany $3,846,591m. UK $2,824,850m. (2019)
Government expenditure budget: $1,760,278m. $1,171,267m. (2018)
Health expenditure % of budget: 21% 19% (2016)