Since 2015, the Horizon Policy Support Facility gives Member States and countries associated to Horizon Europe practical support to design, implement and evaluate reforms that enhance the quality of their research and innovation investments, policies and systems.
The Horizon Europe Policy Support Facility, launched in February 2021, provides good practice, independent high-level expertise and guidance at the request of Member States and Associated Countries through a number of services:
PSF Country (formerly PSF Peer Reviews & Specific support to countries) is an in-depth assessments of a country's R&I system (or of parts of it) carried out by a panel of experts and peers and leading to actionable policy recommendations to the national authorities on reforms necessary to strengthen their R&I system.
PSF Challenge includes the PSF Mutual Learning Exercises and is focused on specific and operational R&I challenges of interest to several volunteering countries. It aims to identify good practice, lessons learned and success factors.
PSF Open allows countries having already benefitted from a PSF exercise to receive support to follow-up on the PSF recommendations.
At the request of national administrations with R&I competences, the Policy Support Facility provides customer-oriented services to support evidence-based policy making. PSF activities are regularly presented and discussed in the European Research Area and Innovation Committee (ERAC).
To request a PSF exercise, national ministries can contact the PSF Team at RTD-PSF@ec.europa.eu for preliminary discussions before submitting an official request.
For more information on the Horizon Europe Policy Support Facility 2021-2027, this presentation provides a useful summary.
Current and upcoming PSF Exercises 2021-2027
Since February 2021, the PSF Exercises 2021-2027 have already been launched in two countries. Additional exercises are planned in the upcoming months. You can find the latest news on this page.
PSF Country projects starting soon:
- Greece and Ukraine
Stay tuned - soon more information
Calendar of events
- 27-29 September: country visit mission to Romania, in-person. The country visit will consist of interviews with all relevant stakeholders, i.e. institutions, academia, business, NGOs... It will be concluded by the preparation of a draft report with a first outline of the recommendations.
- 27 September - 8 October: country visit mission to Moldova, online. The country visit will consist of interviews with all relevant stakeholders, i.e. institutions, academia, business, NGOs... It will be concluded by the preparation of a draft report with a first outline of the recommendations.
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PSF News
Cyprus: boosting engagement between universities and research institutes with businesses
A PSF expert panel has made recommendations on how Cyprus’s publicly funded universities and research institutes can increase their engagement with the business community. The main reason for the current low level of engagement is a shortage of firms with sufficient “absorptive capacity” to benefit from the research, laboratory and consulting services that universities and research institutes offer. Measures to boost engagement with the enterprise sector need to go hand-in-hand with policy action to raise business demand for knowledge-based services.
International R&I cooperation to keep up with new challenges
Global exchange in research and innovation (R&I) is becoming increasingly important, affecting multinational companies, academia and politics. But policies to support R&I internationalisation sometimes lag behind global dynamics, seen only as an appendix to national R&I policies and programmes. At the same time, global challenges – such as climate change, reduction in biodiversity and the overuse of our planet’s resources – do not stop at the EU border. International R&I policy will be measured in terms of its contribution to solving these global challenges.
PSF action plan to help boost Latvia’s S&T ‘human capital’
Despite evidence of progress and strong political will, Latvia’s research, innovation and higher education system remains wedded to EU funding cycles, making longer-term planning difficult, according to the Horizon 2020 Policy Support Facility (PSF). To boost overall investment and career prospects, as well as innovation capacity in the private sector, PSF experts recommended strategic yet practical courses of action.
Open Access: an opportunity for Malta
In this PSF report, commissioned by the Maltese government, a group of independent experts provide recommendations on transitioning the science system in Malta to an “open by default” setting. The experts recommend a “phase-in” approach, with a timeline to 2025, to arrive at: providing open access to scientific publications, making open and FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable) data “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” and implementing related actions on awareness raising, skills, training and support, and career assessment.