I suspect he didn’t remember what it was and took a gamble on the reporter’s qualification that Johnson had voted against it and Trump opposed it, rather than sounding uninformed. Otherwise it’s just an extraordinarily stupid thing to admit in this situation.
I’m new to this too, but the slide deck they have posted seems a good starting place.
The NGI is an initiative of the European Commission to fund “researchers, developers, startups, and SMEs” who are aligned with the “aim to shape the development and evolution of the Internet” according to the principles of:
protecting personal data
ensuring privacy and security
combating disinformation
guaranteeing access and freedom of choice
respecting fundamental rights
enforcing ethics and sustainability by design.
I’m a little less clear on what the 16 projects are (which are listed on slides 6 and 7), but I gather they might be specific objectives, defined by the NGI, within which their funding is categorized, e.g., if you’re doing research on democratizing search capabilities, that research would serve the NGI’s “Search” project and would qualify for funding.
I’m making a lot of assumptions but I’m reasonably confident in them.