The European Horizon program distributes more than €13 billion annually for scientific research. The program includes 23 “associated” countries, in addition to the 27 EU member states. Israel has also participated for years.

But due to the war in Gaza, that cooperation is under pressure. In the Netherlands, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) has called for suspending Israel from Horizon. The European Commission also proposed excluding Israel from the innovation part of Horizon Europe, but that proposal was voted down.

Although Israel is still allowed to participate, its success within Horizon has dropped sharply, according to the European news site Science Business. In 2022, Israel received €303 million in subsidies. Last year, that amount had fallen to just €119 million.

Outlier

Those figures should be interpreted with some caution. “2022 was an outlier year,” says Joep Roet, deputy director of Neth-ER, the advocacy organization representing Dutch knowledge institutions in Brussels. The Netherlands also received almost twice as much funding that year compared to last year. But the decline in funding for Israel is significantly steeper.

Due to delays, Horizon Europe only got underway later than planned. Roet explains: “Part of the 2021 funding was only allocated in 2022. On top of that, additional funding became available for Horizon from the COVID recovery fund.” So absolute numbers do not tell the full story, but Israel’s participation is clearly declining.

Military ties

Fewer and fewer universities are willing to collaborate with Israeli institutions due to their ties with the military. In the Netherlands, several universities have suspended cooperation with Israeli universities and companies, including Radboud University, Delft University of Technology, and Utrecht University. Leiden University also decided this week to review its collaborations.

TU/e froze institutional cooperation with the Israeli university Technion in June 2025 and decided not to enter into new institutional partnerships with Israeli partners until further clarity is available.

At the same time, the university is establishing a committee for sensitive collaborations, led by emeritus professor Niek Lopes Cardozo, tasked with developing an assessment framework and shaping the committee’s structure. This committee will advise the Executive Board on future collaboration decisions, with attention to ethical responsibility and academic freedom.

Fewer grants

Israel also received fewer European Research Council (ERC) grants over the past year, which are awarded to individual researchers. With an average success rate of 21 percent, Israel was long a frontrunner, but the number of awarded grants has dropped significantly. In 2022, there were 118 funded projects; in 2025, that number had fallen to just 42. An ERC spokesperson told Science Business that Israeli research proposals simply were not as strong last year.

In principle, research proposals are assessed solely on quality, but evaluators can see the applicants’ country of origin. In a different context, an ERC working group recently warned that a scientist’s country of affiliation can influence their chances.

Isolation

Israeli universities warn that breaking ties could lead to the isolation of Israeli academics, including researchers who are critical of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government.