Why does the Netherlands not want ‘anonymous applicants’ for European research funding?

The European Commission wants to roughly double the research budget in the forthcoming multiannual programme. This week, governments will once again be discussing the EU budget. And so, behind the scenes, there is a fierce battle over the question of who gets what.

One of the issues is: how do we allocate the extra billions of euros from the Horizon Europe research programme? Things are a bit lopsided in European science: some countries receive almost nothing from the EU, whilst Dutch universities, universities of applied sciences and companies celebrated two weeks ago that they had already secured five billion euros from Horizon.

These billions are currently allocated primarily on the basis of ‘excellence’: only the best research proposals are rewarded. The Netherlands would like to keep it that way, Minister Letschert said recently during a meeting in Brussels with other science ministers.

At the same time – and this is rather striking – she sees no merit in ‘anonymous’ grant applications, i.e. applications where the assessor does not know which country they come from. Nine questions and answers about the Dutch position.

1. For whom might ‘excellence’ be a problem?
Applying for funding is a skill in itself. Excellent proposals tend to come from countries with a great deal of experience in successfully submitting proposals. The European Research Council (ERC) recently concluded that the final distribution of funds is unfair.

2. So what is unfair?
The hope is that countries lagging behind will work hard and become stronger, but there is a risk that successful countries will simply become even more successful, as the then ERC Vice-President Eveline Crone once explained. It is conceivable that countries lagging behind might then start to wonder why they are actually contributing to Horizon.

3. Crone said this back in 2021. Has nothing happened since then?
Yes, countries such as Greece, the Czech Republic and Poland have indeed become more successful. But Bulgaria, Latvia, Slovakia, Romania and ten other lagging countries, for example, are still a long way from being able to compete with Western European countries.

4. What can the EU do about this?
The European Commission is proposing to set aside 5.3 billion euros from the Horizon budget from 2028 onwards specifically for these ‘widening countries’. The idea is that if the lagging countries use that money to develop their research capacity, the whole of the EU will benefit.

5. Sounds like a good plan, doesn’t it?
The Dutch government agrees. However, the European Commission has set an additional condition for accessing funds from this pot: it requires countries to make substantial investments of their own in research and development. This has sparked considerable debate. The Netherlands is a strong advocate of this approach, whilst eight widening countries oppose it. They describe the additional condition as ‘unacceptable’.

6. Isn’t that just a matter of negotiating and finding a middle ground?
Efforts are indeed being made to reach a compromise: Cyprus, which currently holds the EU presidency, wants to conclude the negotiations this month. In this context, the Netherlands is pushing (alongside ‘excellence’) for a definitive end to anonymous grant applications. And, in general, the Jetten government believes that less money should go to Europe.

7. What exactly are anonymous grant applications?
For a long time, there has been a prevailing view that successful countries remain successful due to unconscious biases among those assessing grant applications. These reviewers may be inclined to judge successful countries more favourably.

That is why the European Commission launched a trial of anonymous applications in 2023. In the first of two selection rounds, the names of the applicant and the university were withheld. The list of top scientific publications was also omitted in that round.

According to the Netherlands, the trial yielded nothing but extra bureaucracy. When asked, the Ministry of Education stated that “no clear bias was identified”. An official from the European Commission made a similar point: the blind reviews did not result in widening countries receiving more research funding. The Commission has not provided any facts or figures, but as far as the European Commission is concerned, the trial is now over.

8. Why, then, is the Netherlands raising this issue?
The chair of an ERC working group suggested this year that there may be a ‘postcode bias’ amongst the reviewers, favouring successful countries. So the idea has not been completely dismissed.

9. Does an anonymous review make any difference, given that the Netherlands always scores well anyway?
We put questions on this matter to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. A spokesperson stated that in Europe “a compromise is needed”. We did not get much further than that, but ‘anonymous submission’ may serve as a bargaining chip for the Netherlands in negotiations over the allocation of the budget.