Since its launch in 2015, the Horizon Policy Support Facility (PSF) has provided support to the EU Member States and Associated Countries to implement and evaluate reforms that enhance the quality of their research and innovation investments, policies and systems. Foreseen in Horizon 2020 (under "Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation" and "Europe in a changing world - inclusive, innovative and reflective societies"), the PSF has provided best practice, independent high-level expertise and guidance at the request of the countries.
While improving on the basis of the lessons from the past, the Horizon PSF 2.0. under Horizon Europe will continue providing similar support to the Member States and Associated Countries to help them improve and reform their research and innovation systems. PSF 2.0. will be implemented under the pillar "Strengthening the European Research Area" of Horizon Europe.
Four types of activities will be implemented under PSF 2.0:
- PSF Country activities will assess the specific aspects of the countries’ R&I systems and will lead to concrete recommendations to the national authorities on the reforms necessary to enhance the quality and performance of their R&I systems and/or to unlock the potential of R&I for systemic transformation towards sustainability.
- PSF Challenge activities will facilitate the flow of information, experiences, lessons learned and the identification of good and bad practice around a specific R&I topic of interest to several countries. This strand of activities will notably support the “traditional” mutual learning exercises on R&I policy challenges and/or bottlenecks in R&I systems common to a group of countries.
- PSF Open activities will address on-demand requests (from a single country or a group of countries) that do not fall under the “Country” or “Challenge” category of activities. It will provide a greater flexibility in providing tailor-made approaches to address countries' requests.
- PSF Intelligence activities will provide new cross-cutting and cross-country dedicated analyses with a policy focus, including the exploitation of the existing results from past PSF exercises or other analytical reports.
Panels of independent experts will be established to lead the implementation of each activity. The consortium partners (Ecorys, PPMI, IDEA Consult and EFIS Centre) will provide managerial, methodological and analytical support to the panels of independent experts in implementing their work.