Joint Declaration for a Bold FP10: Investing in Research, Development and Innovation to Boost European Productivity and Competitiveness

Brussels, 7 July 2026: Europe stands at a decisive juncture. The Draghi report on European Competitiveness has laid bare a stark reality: Europe’s productivity growth has stalled, its innovation gap with the United States and China is widening, and the continent risks a slow but irreversible decline in its economic standing. At the same time, the Competitiveness Compass and the EU’s political guidelines place research, development and innovation (RD&I) at the heart of Europe’s strategy to reverse this trend. We, the undersigned — 86 European associations representing key RD&I stakeholders — fully endorse this diagnosis and urgently call on EU Institutions to act with commensurate ambition in designing and funding the next Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (FP10).

The Draghi report calls for an additional €800 billion per year in investment to close Europe’s competitiveness gap, with RD&I as the primary driver of sustainable productivity gains. Innovation-led productivity growth is not merely an economic imperative — it is the only credible path to financing Europe’s green and digital transitions, its open strategic autonomy, and its social model. FP10 is the EU’s principal instrument for catalysing this transformation. Its track record of leveraging private investment, maturing technologies, and building the cross-border collaborative ecosystems that no single Member State can replicate alone makes it uniquely placed to deliver at the scale and speed Europe requires.

Yet current EU RD&I spending remains wholly insufficient relative to this challenge. Europe invests significantly less in R&D as a share of GDP than its main global competitors, and the leverage effects of the Framework Programme — demonstrated conclusively by the Horizon 2020 ex-post evaluation — mean that every euro of EU public investment generates multiples in private and national co-investment. Cutting or stagnating FP10’s budget would be a false economy: it would undermine precisely the public-private partnerships, the technology maturation pipelines, and the talent networks that are indispensable to restoring European productivity growth.

We therefore call on EU Institutions to:

• Allocate a substantially increased budget to FP10, commensurate with the ambition set out in the Draghi report and the Competitiveness Compass, over the 2028–2034 MFF period;
• Reinforce collaborative, industry-driven RD&I through a strengthened Pillar II, ensuring that public-private partnerships continue to reduce investment risk, accelerate technology maturation and translate research excellence into market-ready innovations that boost productivity;
• Ensure FP10, together with ECF, supports the full RD&I continuum — from fundamental research to deployment and scale-up — aligned with EU strategic priorities and clearly defined industrial needs, including the green and digital transitions and European security and resilience. Preserving a strong ECF and FP10, both in terms of budget and in terms of governance and synergies between the two programmes is essential to support the entire innovation cycle, strengthen Europe’s industrial base, and deliver on the Union’s competitiveness objectives.

The window of opportunity is narrow. Decisions taken in the coming months on the next MFF will determine whether Europe has the RD&I firepower to compete globally and sustain its prosperity. We, the undersigned associations, stand ready to work with EU Institutions to design an FP10 that is bold, well-resourced, and fit to deliver the innovation-driven productivity growth Europe urgently needs.