📋 Tender Overview
FPrevision4cohesion
Grant agreement ID: 101206241
DOI
10.3030/101206241
EC signature date
4 April 2025
Start date
1 September 2026
End date
31 August 2028
Funded under
Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Description: To enhance industrial competitiveness and address societal challenges through excellent research, the European Framework Programmes have concentrated resources on top-performing research institutions. However, prioritising excellence over cohesion may worsen regional economic disparities. Supported by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions programme, the FPrevision4cohesion project will explore the impact of competitive FP research funding on the European scientific network. It will reveal how FPs influence knowledge distribution and inequality, which is vital for promoting cohesion. Using counterfactual analysis, the project will quantify impacts, strengthen connections between core and peripheral organisations, and examine the effects of different policy approaches. Ultimately, it aims to strike a balance between competitive programmes and convergence, addressing synergies in research and policy.
Objective
In an effort to boost industrial competitiveness and address societal challenges through excellence research, the European Framework Programmes (FPs) have been concentrating resources in a core of top-performing research institutions. But pursuing excellence at the expense of cohesion is a risky endeavour, as it can exacerbate inter-regional economic disparities. FPrevision4cohesion aims to unravel the impact of competitive FP research funding and different policy designs on the structural and spatial dynamics of the European scientific network. Developing a comprehensive picture of FPs’ influence on knowledge distribution and inequality is critically needed if we are to avoid deepening existing innovation divides and guide cohesion efforts in a targeted way. If convergence is understood not as mere redistribution of funds from core to peripheral regions, but as sustained support for the periphery's research and innovation capacity, we need deeper insights into the FPs' role in consolidating or fragmenting collaborative core-periphery ties.
The project will adopt a novel counterfactual analysis, comparing for the first time the impact of funded to non-funded FP projects using network science techniques. This approach offers significant advancements over existing studies which rely almost exclusively on funded FP collaborations and are therefore limited in their capacity to isolate causal effects. The analysis is meant to not merely quantify impact, but also highlight how the structural links between core and peripheral organisations could be strengthened, and how different policy instruments with a top-down vs bottom-up intervention logic influence the process. FPrevision4cohesion aspires to guide both research and policy in balancing competitive programmes with convergence efforts, and directly responds to rec
