News from Brussels

European Innovation Scoreboard

The European Commission has released the European Innovation Scoreboard 2021 providing a comparative analysis of innovation performance in the European Union countries. With its help, the strengths and weaknesses of national innovation systems can be assessed. Thus European Innovation Scoreboard assists countries with identifying areas that should be addressed. It has been shown that Europe's innovation performance keeps improving across the European Union, on average, by 12.5% since 2014. Based on their scores the EU countries were divided into four performance groups: Emerging Innovators, Moderate Innovators, Strong Innovators and Innovation Leaders.

Commission to invest €14.7 billion from Horizon Europe for a more healthy, green and digital Europe

Horizon Europe is the EU’s 2021-2027 key funding programme for research and innovation with a budget of €95.5 billion.The European Commission defined the terms of the main Horizon’s Europe work Programme, outlining the objectives for the areas receiving an investment of €14.7 billion for the 2021-2022 period. This investment will support European researchers through fellowships, training and exchanges. It is also expected to help accelerate the European green and digital transition, contribute to a sustainable recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and to EU resilience against future crises, which includes topics that aim to modernise health systems and provide for research capacities, in particular for vaccine development.

Belgian Court orders AstraZeneca to deliver vaccine doses to the EU

The Court of First Instance of Brussels ordered AstraZeneca to urgently deliver 50 million doses of vaccines by 27 September 2021, respecting a mandatory schedule. This decision came in the sequence of the case brought by the European Commission and the 27 EU Member States due to the non-compliance of AstraZeneca’s terms of the contract. Furthermore, the court also defined that if the timeline is not accomplished, AstraZeneca will have to pay a penalty of 10 euros per dose not delivered.