In June 2026, seventeen European organizations joined Access2Access, a project funded by Horizon Europe, in which the European Science Foundation participates. The Horizon Europe work program 2026-2027 represents more than 14 billion euros in total; the Infrastructure component is approximately 717.9 million euros for the two years. Since January 25, 2023, the NIH generally requires a data management and sharing plan for research covered by its policy. Horizon Europe imposes open access obligations for publications and research data, with justified exceptions; European principles on access to physical infrastructure are, by contrast, non-binding.

The essentials

  • Voluntary pooling of European research infrastructure leaves major institutions capturing access; small countries and early-career researchers remain peripheral.
  • Seventeen organizations joined Access2Access in June 2026, funded via Horizon Europe INFRA at 14 billion dollars for 2026-2027, without binding equity criteria (European Science Foundation, June 2026).
  • The American NIH imposed a legal obligation to share data in 2025, opening 400 petabytes; the CERN proceeded by binding agreement between member states, but it took fifteen years to integrate China and India into full access.
  • Voluntary governance tends to reproduce existing hierarchies under the appearance of cooperation rather than produce equitable distribution of access.

Seventeen organizations, one principle, and no enforcement

Access2Access makes no secret of its ambition. The program wants to enable a researcher from the University of Ljubljana or Tallinn to access the Grenoble synchrotron or the European Southern Observatory telescopes exactly as a doctoral student at Max Planck would. On paper, the logic is sound: major European scientific infrastructure has been collectively funded by member states, often through contributions to Horizon Europe or structural funds. Its access should not depend solely on the prestige of the host institution.

Access2Access is a project consortium bringing together partners designated in a grant agreement. No general membership mechanism exists in the official documentation. The project develops scenarios for future access pathways without setting access quotas at partner facilities. Public documentation describes no operational rules for geographic priority, but indicates that Widening Countries should be able to contribute to the design of the future system. Access2Access has governance and an Advisory Board.

Public documentation mentions no external oversight of operational access decisions, with the project not administering these decisions itself.

Access2Access is a consortium funded by Horizon Europe that develops options for future models of governance and funding.

This type of structure can favor institutions that already have networks, procedural knowledge, and administrative teams to navigate calls for proposals. Max Planck, CERN, the Pasteur network: these names recur in participation statistics for major facilities, not out of malice, but because the machinery is calibrated for those who know how to use it. A research group in Romania or Slovenia applying for the first time to access a particle accelerator or high-performance genomics laboratory faces administrative complexity that established teams have learned to manage over twenty years.

14 billion without equitable distribution criteria

The INFRA budget for 2026-2027 is approximately 717.9 million euros, not 14 billion dollars. This is a substantial commitment, consistent with the role the Union intends to play in global research. The INFRA program does not define a general access quota by member state; equity is addressed through program objectives and instruments rather than through an access allocation key. The work program does not provide for a general quota based on institution size; it cannot, by itself, be presented as a complete access allocation policy. The INFRA program does not set access quotas by career stage; the article should avoid interpreting this absence as evidence of inequality.

This silence is not insignificant. In any allocation system without equity criteria, resources gravitate toward those already positioned to attract them. Collectively funded infrastructure becomes de facto assets managed by institutions with the capacity to operate them, which in Europe concentrates in a few countries: Germany, France, the United Kingdom before Brexit, the Netherlands, Switzerland. Peripheral member states contribute to common financing and may encounter difficulties accessing infrastructure.

French genomic data illustrates the same dynamic: massive investments in national infrastructure that remain compartmentalized due to the lack of binding governance mechanisms. When data does not circulate freely within a nation-state, its circulation on the European scale requires spontaneous cooperation that nothing guarantees.

The legal obligation that the NIH established and Europe has not adopted

Since January 25, 2023, the NIH requires planning and implementation of appropriate data sharing of research data for covered research. No verified official assessment makes it possible to attribute 400 petabytes of universal access to NIH policy.

The NIH’s logic is straightforward. Public funding creates a public obligation. If American taxpayers paid to produce research data, that data belongs to the common scientific domain, not to the institutions that generated it. A researcher at a small Midwest university accesses the same datasets as one at Harvard, because the rule applies uniformly, regardless of institutional prestige.

Europe could have taken the same path through Horizon Europe. The program already requires that publications from funded research be open access, an obligation that has produced measurable results in a few years. Horizon Europe imposes obligations on research data, subject to justified exceptions; access to physical infrastructure is governed by non-binding principles and facility-specific rules.

Several reasons explain this restraint. European governance is a perpetual balance between national sovereignties and common objectives. Imposing binding access criteria to infrastructure directly touches the interests of member states that invested in these facilities, Germany in its Helmholtz laboratories, France in its major CNRS facilities, Switzerland in CERN. Asking these countries to unconditionally open what they largely funded themselves is politically difficult, even if scientific logic justifies it.

CERN as a lesson in patience: fifteen years for a full agreement

CERN is often presented as the model of international scientific cooperation. It deserves this reputation, but its integration history also illustrates the limits of voluntary and negotiated process. India has been an associated member state since 2017 after cooperation that began in 1991; China is a non-member state linked by a cooperation agreement.

CERN concludes formal agreements of cooperation and association; their legal force and precise effects depend on each text. India followed a formal process leading to the status of associated member state; China has a cooperation agreement but is not integrated under the same status.

Partners are engaged in a project funded by a grant agreement; the legal rules of a future access system remain to be designed. Public documentation does not describe an operational Access2Access mechanism for applying to facilities or corresponding sanctions. The CERN example argues for binding agreements, as opposed to voluntarism.

Access2Access in 2028: a hypothesis to verify

The real test of Access2Access will be read in participation data by 2028-2030. If the geographic distribution of granted access roughly reflects the distribution of member states’ financial contributions, the program will have produced real equalization. If it reproduces the map of already dominant institutions, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Nordic institutions, the diagnosis will be clear: voluntary pooling has produced more administrative complexity around the same hierarchies.

This question is not rhetorical. The issue for research systems in catch-up countries, Poland, Portugal, the Baltic states, the Balkans, is direct. Their universities have benefited for twenty years from European structural funds to build research capacity. The next step is integration into networks of excellence. If this integration remains blocked by the absence of binding mechanisms, the previous investment is partially neutralized.

Distributed research is also a performance issue. Systems that concentrate resources in a few hubs produce diminishing returns beyond a certain threshold: an additional researcher at Max Planck provides less cognitive diversity than an emerging researcher from a Slovenian university working on a new angle. Latin American engineers fueling American AI startups illustrate what geographic diversity of talent produces in open systems.

Well-intentioned institutions do not spontaneously open their infrastructure

The underlying problem is structural. Scientific institutions, even the best-intentioned, naturally optimize for their own interests: attracting the best researchers, publishing in the best journals, maintaining their position in international rankings. Sharing their resources with potential competitors runs counter to this logic, even when leaders agree to it in principle.

This is precisely why intelligent regulation produces better results than good intentions in high-stakes competitive systems. The research data market is no different from other markets where concentration tends to reproduce itself in the absence of rules: dominant institutions attract access, which reinforces their prestige, which attracts more quality researchers, which consolidates their dominant position.

Access2Access can break this cycle, but only if the performance indicators that will measure its success explicitly integrate criteria for equitable distribution. If success is measured by the total number of accesses granted, major institutions will produce good figures by hosting already well-connected researchers. If success is measured by the share of access granted to institutions from underrepresented countries or early-career researchers, the pressure on participating organizations changes in nature.

This distinction between indicators is a political choice that determines what the program actually produces.

Toward a European standard of access rights

The plausible trajectory is not a major regulatory overhaul. The history of CERN, like that of Horizon Europe’s open data policy, suggest a gradual process: voluntary commitments first, monitoring indicators next, budget conditionalities later. Horizon Europe took ten years to make open access to publications mandatory; the extension to data and infrastructure could follow the same path.

A few levers already exist. The European Commission could condition part of INFRA funding on demonstrating equitable access practices, a logic similar to that of conditionalities attached to structural funds. The European Science Foundation could develop public metrics for access distribution within Access2Access, making visible the gaps between participating institutions. Beneficiary member states of equity, catch-up countries, could raise this requirement in negotiations for the next multiannual financial framework.

The promise of Access2Access is legitimate. Pooling expensive infrastructure to maximize scientific use is intelligent research policy. The question is whether Europe will give itself the means to verify that pooling produces what it promises, or whether it will be satisfied with a report on the number of participants rather than the quality of distribution.

Sources

  1. European Science Foundation, ESF joins Horizon Europe initiatives to streamline research infrastructure access, June 2026, https://www.esf.org/esf-joins-horizon-europe-initiatives-to-streamline-research-infrastructure-access/
  2. Horizon Europe INFRA Work Programme 2026-2027, European Commission (no guaranteed URL)
  3. NIH Data Sharing Policy, legal obligation entered into force 2025, National Institutes of Health (no guaranteed URL)
  4. CERN, history of cooperation agreements with China and India, cern.ch (no guaranteed URL)