​Commissioner Moedas launched the 2016/17 Horizon 2020 Work Programme today at a press conference in Brussels. The two-year programme has a budget of almost €16 billion and has been designed to respond to the wider policy objectives of the European Commission, including the Jobs, Growth and Investment Package, the Digital Single Market, the Energy Union, Climate Change policy and making Europe a stronger global actor.

The Commissioner said that while these were the overarching priorities, on a horizontal level the Work Programme also responds to the priorities defined by him on research and innovation policy, namely the three O’s (Open Science, Open Innovation and Open to the World).

The second Horizon 2020 Work Programme includes 16 work programmes, 63 calls and around 600 topics in 2016 and 2017. The Commission is planning to award approximately 1000 European Research Council grants and 10,000 fellows are to benefit from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions in 2016 itself.

The Work Programme is available on the Participant Portal (under the ‘Reference Documents’ section) and the Commission has produced a useful factsheet which summarises the main features and provides an overview table on funding calls in 2016 and 2017. UKRO factsheets on the Portal have been updated and provide information on each part of Horizon 2020.