The place of Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities in European programmes.

The concept behind the integration of SSH research throughout the whole research framework programme is not completely new: to a certain degree, socio-economic aspects were a cross-cutting issue in the 7th EU Framework Programme (FP7). However, embedding SSH has now become a paramount ambition in Horizon 2020 thus the European Commission (EC) is currently in the process of putting in place several measures to ensure this. The inclusion of SSH experts in Horizon 2020 Advisory Groups and an enhanced cooperation of the different relevant EC units and Directorates are foreseen to ensure that SSH aspects are taken up in the research topics under the different Horizon 2020 sub-programmes. SSH relevant topics have been “flagged” on the Horizon 2020 Participant Portal to improve their visibility towards the research communities. Evaluation panels for these topics will include SSH experts. Finally the introduction of a monitoring system for the issue of embedding SSH has recently been announced.

Responses to the first Work Programmes, in relation to the inclusion of SSH, have been rather reserved to date. In an open letter to Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn, a number of European research associations have been critical of the first Horizon 2020 calls saying that they “have a narrow utilitarian approach to SSH and fail to mobilise the breadth of relevant SSH research for societal challenges1. They also raise the issue that the funding for genuine SSH driven topics on issues such as the European economies and societies (e.g. citizenship, identity and culture) or the role of Europe as a global actor has been reduced in comparison to FP7.

The chairs of the Science Europe Scientific Committees for the Humanities and for the Social Sciences also noted that the first Work Programmes failed to systematically facilitate the integration of SSH and fell short of the high-level objectives. Furthermore, a number of EU member states have expressed their concern with regard to the monitoring of SSH embedding. They urged that monitoring should take place both at proposal and project level with the inclusion of budget allocations. In this context, the German delegation of the responsible programme committee has provided the EC with concrete suggestions for adapting proposal submission forms in order to facilitate this monitoring process.

Further information: http://e-newsletter.net4society.eu/issues-july-2014