Theresa May’s appeal for a special Brexit deal on science and research collaboration, worth billions to the British economy, is being stonewalled by Brussels as it prepares to offer an arrangement less privileged and more expensive than that given to non-EU states such as Israel.

The European commission’s negotiators refused to discuss the issue in formal talks last week, instead insisting they would present the UK with conditions of entry for a “third country” into its €97.9bn research programme once they had been formally published. A draft copy of the so-called Horizon Europe document, seen by the Guardian, suggests that the UK is set to be offered less generous access than countries with associate status in the current programme, known as Horizon 2020, including Israel, Turkey, Albania and Ukraine.

Those states, along with countries in the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) – Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland – will be “associated to all programme parts” of the new research and science framework, of which details are to be published on 7 June, according to the leaked document. It is understood that wealthy countries with a developed research and development capacity are to be offered a greater opportunity to pay in and collaborate with the EU under a reform of the current programme, which will end in 2020. However, the UK is set to join Canada and South Korea in the category of countries that will have to pay a higher price for the privilege of collaborating, while being barred from a particular raft of programmes designed to encourage innovation.(theguardian)…[+]