This newsletter features EU research and innovation funding and policy news items. Updates on the European Research Council (ERC) are covered via the separate ERC National Contact Point (NCP) newsletter which is jointly provided by KoWi and the EU Bureau of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Marc Lemaître has been appointed to lead the Directorate General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) of the European Commission from 16 February 2023.

Lemaître will take over from acting Director General Signe Ratso, one of the two deputy Director Generals of the DG. Ms Ratso took on the post temporarily after the departure of Jean-Eric Paquet who had been leading the DG since 2018 and was appointed as EU ambassador to Japan in summer 2022.

Marc Lemaître is curently still Director General of DG REGIO (Regional and Urban Policy) and already looks back at a long career at the European Commission. He is a Luxembourgish national, has served in several Commissioners’ Cabinets and is experienced in numerous EU policy areas, including the EU budget.

The work of DG REGIO has links to Horizon Europe when it comes to ongoing efforts in the area of synergies with the Structural funds.

A new project was launched by the European Commission to promote policy experimentation across EU R&I policy and its funding instruments. The objective of the project is to trigger citizens’ engagement to achieve the aims of the Horizon Europe Missions.

Policy experimentation will allow testing of new ideas before scaling up solutions and to examine why an idea might not work as well. Specifically, the project will try to find practical actions that successfully engage citizens in EU Missions. Project results will also inform decisions on whether to include more experimentation actions of this kind in the Framework Programme in future.

The project consortium brings together the Centre for Collective Intelligence Design at Nesta, the UK innovation agency for social good and the Innovation Growth Lab at Nesta and the Barcelona School of Economics.