A post-Brexit agreement for research and innovation Outcomes from a simulated negotiation process. Bruegel Special Report 28 January 2020

Leigh, Michael and Thompson, Beth and Veugelers, Reinhilde. (2020) A post-Brexit agreement for research and innovation Outcomes from a simulated negotiation process. Bruegel Special Report 28 January 2020. Series > Bruegel (Brussels) > Other . UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

The UK will leave the European Union on 31 January 2020. Negotiators and commentators have spent more than three years discussing the terms on which the UK will withdraw, but comparatively little attention has been paid to the future relationship between the UK and the EU after Brexit at a sectoral level. Withdrawing is merely the first stage of the process, and the UK and the EU will soon begin to think about negotiating a new relationship and decide which issues to prioritise. Research and innovation is one of the key areas in which the UK and the EU will need to establish a post-Brexit relationship. Over the past two decades, the UK and the EU have been at the forefront of that enterprise through the development of the European Research Area (ERA). Together, European nations have created a world-leading research base. Six of the world’s top twenty universities are in the ERA, and Europe produces a third of the world’s scientific publications with just 7% of the global population. A new post-Brexit relationship on research and innovation will need to be negotiated to ensure we sustain and grow this valuable and mutually beneficial partnership. Research and innovation are critical to achieving lasting competitiveness and economic development, especially with the dominance of the USA and the rising challenge of China in this field. An early agreement providing for cooperation on research and innovation would reflect the economic and social importance of research and innovation to the people of the UK and the EU. This report sets out what the Wellcome Trust and Bruegel have learned from a project to simulate a negotiation process between the UK and EU to create a post-Brexit research and innovation agreement. Our negotiating scenario assumed that the UK had left the EU with a withdrawal agreement, and that the negotiation was taking place during a ‘standstill’ transition period. Our exercise demonstrated that it is possible to reach agreement among experts on the terms of an EU-UK research and innovation deal. However, the project also revealed that some elements of an agreement may be harder to negotiate than expected. A shared purpose and belief in the importance of research and innovation is not enough to see a deal come to fruition. It is also necessary to overcome a number of political and technical challenges that are spelled out in this report. The process must start now to ensure an agreement is reached as soon as possible. We hope that this report will provide inspiration and guidance for that process.

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