Encouraged by previous successes, Scotland looks forward to the next round of EU funding for research and innovation with optimism.

Scottish hopes for Horizon 2020

Remember Dolly the sheep,  the first successfully cloned mammal?

Created in a lab in Scotland  with the help of EU funding.

Created by a Scottish company  with the help of EU funding.

But what can a country of  5 million people expect

from the next round of funding  starting in 2014 with Horizon 2020?

held by the Scottish Parliament’s  European Committee last Friday.

The EU’s Horizon 2020 programme  promises €80 billion of funding

for research and development over 7 years,

and as Scotland has 5 universities  in the top 200 in the world,

former Scottish government  Enterprise Minister Jim Mather is optimistic

The fact that we are English-speaking,  a relatively small jurisdiction,

means that we can actually trawl Europe,

be it the smaller countries  or regions of the bigger countries,

and look for partners that have good ideas,  that need to tap into academia.

We’ve got a densely packed, high-quality  academic infrastructure to plug into.

Scottish MEP Alyn Smith brought his  expertise from the EP’s research committee

and he wants to see  less bureaucracy in accessing funds.

There remains a number of  very practical barriers:

the red tape and the paper chase,  the uncertainty over funding.

However, with Member States at odds  over the size of the EU's budget from 2014,

and a final decision  not expected until December,

it remains to be seen whether  Horizon 2020 can meet its goals

and whether Scotland can win the race  for research and innovation funding.