The EU-Russia Collaborative Innovation Project

Russia and Horizon 2020

Horizon 2020 — the world's largest publicly funded research and innovation programme — is open to applicants beyond the EU's borders. Among all non-member countries, Russia has consistently received the most funding, making it the programme's leading international partner by financial compensation, participant numbers, and collaborative actions.

Russia inherited an extensive science base from the Soviet era, but federal research spending has remained low and unstable. Horizon 2020 offers a route to close that gap — channelling investment into research, development, and societal challenges including clean energy, health, transport, and climate change.

"Horizon 2020 is a key actor in helping further establish Russia as a centre of innovation, develop its international scientific position and improve international cooperation with the EU." — Leonid Bobylev, Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center

The Cooperation Framework

EU–Russia scientific collaboration is structured across several mechanisms:

• The Common Space in Research, Education and Cultural Matters — established in 2003, it underpins joint R&D on the basis of shared values and mutual interest.
• The Joint Science and Technology Cooperation Committee — working groups meeting regularly across aeronautics, energy, environment, agriculture, health, nanotechnologies, and space.
• The EU–Russia Science and Technology Cooperation Roadmap — sets out concrete actions to build a strategic research and innovation partnership.

Key Joint Programmes

• ERA.NET RUS Plus — a 28-member consortium deepening transnational collaboration in technology, health, social sciences, and the environment, with an explicit goal of reducing the drag of national borders on cooperative research.
• BILAT-RUS-Advanced — a bilateral initiative designed to raise competitiveness on both sides through strategic partnership across science, technology, and innovation.

Further reading

Featured figures