New European Bauhaus not a new EU Mission

At the end of November, the European Commission's proposal to set up the 6th European Commission was withdrawn. The EU's New European Bauhaus (NEB) mission. The possibility of establishing a new EU Mission has been intensively discussed since July 2023.

In the end, however, 21 Member States expressed their opposition to the launch of a new mission, for legal reasons – they do not find a legal basis for this procedure in the HE Regulation, procedural reasons – the MS were not consulted in advance and were presented with a fait accompli, and substantive reasons – at the moment it is not even possible to evaluate the success of the existing missions. The key argument was that the Missions were launched only two years ago and there is no evidence of clearly positive results yet, it is too short a time to evaluate. The position of the majority of Member States is that they support the New European Bauhaus as well as the mission-based approach within HE, but that the NEB does not need to be a stand-alone mission. The NEB partly coincides with the Smart Cities and Adaptation to Climate Change missions. In addition, NEB's connection to research seems to be insufficient. 

Based on the latest information, in 2024 the NEB will become another "destination" under Pillar 2 of Horizon Europe, with a budget of around €20 million for five calls. Topics will include neighborhood transformation, regenerative design, the use of new bio-based materials, the impact of the built environment on social relationships, and governance models for co-designing neighbourhoods.

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