Switzerland signs deal for EU research access

The Federal Council has approved the EU agreement on research programmes Keystone-SDA

Swiss Education Minister Guy Parmelin is to sign an agreement to allow Swiss universities and students back into European Union research programmes.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The Swiss government has approved the text of the agreement negotiated with the EU.

+ Switzerland risks exclusion from Europe’s ‘CERN for AI’

The signing will enable retroactive association with the Horizon Europe research programme, the Euratom programme and the Digital Europe programme as of January 1, 2025, Parmelin announced at a media conference in Bern on Thursday. This is planned for November 2025.

+ Swiss-EU bilateral treaty updates explained

The EU programme agreement (Eupa) regulates Switzerland’s participation in EU programmes in areas such as research and education. For example, Switzerland will be able to participate in the Erasmus plus education programme from 2027.

Once signed, the agreement will be provisionally applied until ratification or until December 31, 2028 at the latest, according to the statement.

Translated from German with DeepL/mga

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate them into English. A journalist then briefly reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team.

Did you find this explanation helpful? Please fill out the short survey on this page to help us understand your needs.