At the dawn of the new millennium, the European Union adopted the Lisbon Strategy, aimed at making the European economy "the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world". Since then, support for research has played an important role in the Union's strategy, although this has not yet made it possible to achieve the target of devoting 3 % of gross domestic product to research and development. The main mechanism put in place by the European Union to support this research effort is the Horizon Europe programme, which plans to distribute €95.5 billion in European funding over the period 2021-2027, an average of €13.6 billion per year. The European agenda for the first half of 2025 will be marked by negotiations on the future multiyear research programme, against a backdrop where the Draghi report on European competitiveness in September 2024 highlighted the risk of the EU falling behind the world's leading economies. Against this backdrop, the Court carried out a survey in 2024 on the mobilisation of European research funds, focusing on the two previous multiyear programmes, Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020.
