The point regarding research is not so much to do with monetary investment but the opportunities for international collaborative activity.
If you do want it to be about money though, it was one of the areas where the UK did do disproportionately well.

Regarding health and safety, how does the UK leading on court cases prove your point? Maybe it just points towards a problem with litigious culture or our workforce being made up of clumsy idiots.
( Pig Bodine., Thu 7 Jul 2016, 13:41, 1 reply)

my point about court cases is that corporations already have an incentive
to implement extremely stringent quality controls and workplace safety, because UK's litigation culture makes them much more susceptible to massive payouts for worker injuries compared to other places in the EU.

I don't know enough about your field to discuss international co-operation, but knowing that tools like Thompson Reuters' Web of Knowledge exist means that there other incentives for international collaboration outside the established EU frameworks.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Thu 7 Jul 2016, 14:23, closed)