r/europe 2d ago

Data Non-EU countries receive more funding from European Innovation Fund than 2/3 of EU countries combined

Post image
2.1k Upvotes

450 comments sorted by

View all comments

27

u/Terrible-Duck4953 India 2d ago

Why does the UK get so less funding than Israel.

63

u/shatureg 1d ago edited 1d ago

Forget about the UK. Why do actual EU countries get so much less?!

EDIT: The downvoters in the comments below really show you can't have a normal conversation when Israel is involved. There's some militant people with an agenda in the comments whenever that country's name is dropped here.

12

u/MartinBP Bulgaria 1d ago

Because you actually need an innovative economy to create projects worth funding. In Bulgaria we can't even get the post offices to accept card payments and universities still need you to go apply in person. Why would we be getting that money? So another crook can build a villa under the guise of an "eco-house concept" because he slapped a solar panel on top?

0

u/s7oev 1d ago edited 1d ago

Stop with the self-degrading bullshit, there's plenty of innovation happening in Bulgaria, quick example - one of world's best AI institutes (INSAIT) is in Sofia, funded by Google and Amazon, and co-organized by Sofia University with ETH Zurich and EPFL - 2 of the best schools for computer science in the world.

In fact in this very graph, you can see we are doing quite well with the received funding for a country of our size. We are also the best country in this graph from Eastern Europe.

Don't get me wrong, we can (and should) do better, but self degradation will not help us improve even further.

-2

u/shatureg 1d ago

Why Israel tho? If the funding is completely agnostic to the country of origin, you might as well pump that money into projects in South Korea or Canada, no?

3

u/europeanguy99 1d ago edited 1d ago

Because South Korea and Taiwan never applied to be part of the program, while Israel did. Canada actually joined parts of the program this year as well.

1

u/shatureg 1d ago

I love how I'm getting downvoted for asking a question and how you're not even mentioning which program you're talking about (which wasn't mentioned in the post or anywhere in this specific comment chain). I googled it myself eventually. The program is Horizon Europe and none of you mfers thought it necessary to mention it a single time for whatever reason.