2 minute read / November 6, 2026
On 04-05 Nov 2026 in Dublin, our CEO Stefano Mainero attended the MSCA Presidency Conference 2026 organised by the Irish Presidency of the EU Council, Research Ireland, and supported by the European Commission.
The conference was an excellent opportunity to celebrate 30 years of the EU Marie-Curie programme designed to fund the mobility of researchers and scientists. During the years the programme has changed and evolved also in the name: Marie Skłodowska-Curie in Horizon Europe.
Great speakers explained how taking part in this programme helped them devise their professional carriers and lively debates provided a lot of suggestions on how to improve it, right now when the new EU Budget 2028-2034 is currently being discusssed.
A few of interesting questions were asked about MSCA:
– being designed 30 years ago, included physical mobility. Is now so much travelling still needed or we could perform same actions remotely, avoiding generation of CO2?
– it started in the mid 1990s with little money allocated and then it became popular with consequent budget increase. But now it is even too popular (positive effect) – it is part of the Pillar1 of Horizon Europe – therefore a higher selection of projects must be carried out to stay within the limits of the budget assigned, resulting with a very poor success rate (negative effect)
– this generates the counter-effect of MSCA becoming less attractive (negative effect multiplied) , therefore important decisions have to be made: in practice, a robust increase of the budget allocated is required to re-acquire popularity
– will it be possible for researchers and scientists to make their voice heard up to the point the MSCA budget increase request will be satisfied?
These are just a small example of the hundreds of constructive discussions had during this event.
Next MSCA Presidency 2027 conference will be held in May 2027 in Vilnius (LT).
