Research system ‘cannot afford’ to lose Swiss and UK

The whole European research system would suffer if it no longer included the UK and Switzerland, according to the president of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, one of the world's leading universities, writes John Morgan for Times Higher Education.

Professor Lino Guzzella of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zurich said an alternative international grants scheme would be needed were Swiss and UK universities to find themselves outside the European Research Council. Guzzella was speaking as part of a Times Higher Education feature published last week on the implications for Swiss universities of the nation’s crisis in relations with the European Union – prompted by a row over the issue of free movement of people – and on lessons from Switzerland for UK universities as they contemplate Brexit.

Switzerland, which is not an EU member state, previously took part in EU research programmes as an associated country. But after a 2014 referendum in which Swiss voters narrowly backed limits on immigration from the EU, the EU set a deadline of February 2017 for Switzerland to ratify a free movement deal with new member state Croatia or be kicked out of Horizon 2020, the bloc’s current research programme. There is, as yet, no certainty over whether the UK will seek to secure associated country status in EU research programmes after Brexit.
Full report on the Times Higher Education site