Unlocking Opportunities: A Comprehensive Guide to Finding and Evaluating Horizon Europe Calls
Horizon Europe grants can be transformative. They can be transformative for a researcher or a disease foundation, and it’s not just about the funding.
They are transformative because they are more like a seed that, when nurtured, grows into new collaborations, more funding, and ultimately more impact than you ever expected.
That’s all great, but you are probably asking yourself, “How do I know if what I want to do is fundable by Horizon Europe grants?”
The simple answer could be: look at the Horizon Europe calls.
However, that is not the simple answer because Horizon Europe calls come in many different types, and the text description in the calls is dense. Even if you find a call that seems appropriate, it may not be.
This article is for researchers, medical nonprofits such as disease foundations, patient organizations, and professional societies, and those working in biotechs and pharma. It is about clearing up some of the mystery around EU calls.
IMPORTANT NOTE: US based organizations may be eligible for funding! For call topics published under the Health Cluster (see below) US based organizations are eligible to receive funding. For the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) it also possible with the caveat that you have to provide a justification for the unique value that a US partner brings.
By the end of this article, you will understand:
What Horizon Europe calls are
How to search for Horizon Europe calls
The best way to evaluate Horizon Europe Calls
Strategies for finding suitable Horizon Europe calls at the earliest point possible
What are Horizon Europe calls?
Horizon Europe calls are calls for proposals for Horizon Europe grants. Horizon Europe grants are the European Union’s research and innovation funding mechanism.
All of the EU countries and some ‘associated’ countries pool funding together. Then, in chunks of seven years, the EU develops a strategic plan, which is structured around a number of different pillars which are then divided into clusters. Each cluster then develops work programmes for a two-year period that describe a number of calls for research and timelines for their launch.
The call topic text is divided into htree broad sections:
Expected outcomes
Scope
Expected impacts
This framework is then used to provide details for Horizon Europe Calls.
Fifteen years ago, call topic texts were much more specific. They have become much more broad or bottom-up. This means there is more likelihood you can find a call that fits your needs. On the other hand, it means you will be competing across multiple different. There are different types of grants of what Horizon Europe names the Specific programme.
Pillar 1: Excellent Science
ERC: 100% funding mostly single investigator grants matched to stage of career development Synergy grants for small consortia. These are more bottom-up calls
Marie Sklodowska-Curie: Lump sum based on per month of trainee time basis training costs 1.800 can be used to support some research costs
Research infrastructures
Pillar II: Global Challenges and industrial competitiveness
Made up of clusters
Health
Culture, Creativity, and Inclusive Society
Civil Security for Society
Digital, Industry & Space
Climate, Energy & Mobility
Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment
Pillar III: Innovative Europe
European Innovation Council: focus on SMEs
Pathfinder, Transition, and Accelerator grants
European Innovation Ecosystems
Partnerships such as the Innovative Health Initiative: life science public/private partnership, consortium requires an equal amount of in-kind contribution from industry, charities, and other nonprofits as the EU funding
Two types of calls: single stage - industry and public partners form consortium and respond
two-stage: industry form the call topic, public respond in stage 1 and then build a full proposal together with industry
Other joint undertakings
EIC: Focused on deep tech and radical innovation variable funding based on form
Pathfinder: radical never done before innovation
Accelerator: building businesses strong requirement to have a clear business plan
There are three main types of ‘actions’ that you need to consider in terms of the funding model:
Innovation Action: Reimburse 70% of costs for companies, 100% for public institutions
Research and Innovation Action: reimburses 100% of costs, tend to include a spectrum of projects along the innovation value chain
Coordinating and support actions: 100% of costs, building networks and therefore less about doing actual research
Tactics for finding Horizon Europe calls.
Review work programmes
Horizon Europe is divided into different pillars and those into different programmes. Each programme will publish a work programme for 2-year time periods.
It is a good strategy to review these and look ahead as far as possible.
Call topics are published somewhere between 3 and 4 months before the proposal is due. It can be a challenge to form and consortium and submit in that time period, particularly if it is a new concept.
The draft work programmes are sometimes leaked before they are officially published. These drafts, while not definitive, can give you a heads up and help you to prepare. Often University grants and contracts offices will have access to these drafts. You can also find them online just by searching for draft work programme.
It is worthwhile to scan other work programmes beyond those that seem most interesting to you. Say, for example, you are interested in putting together a proposal for the Health Programme. Sometimes other programmes will have relevant call topics in areas that cross over. Digital health is a good example.
You can find the current work programmes on the EU portal: Funding & tenders (europa.eu).
Follow the link and then choose the filter pick list to identify the work programme you want to download. The main Horizon Europe Work Programmes are shown in the screenshot. If you want to other areas such as ERC and EIC scroll down in the main window.
Pay attention to Horizon Europe Partnerships.
For life sciences the preminer partnership the IHI does not publish a set work programme for two years. Instead, they list draft call topics on their website.
These do not always go through to become a published call particularly for the two-stage proposals, but if the text is fairly detailed, you can be somewhat certain it will happen.
The IHI also provides the opportunity to submit topic ideas. They do review these and even publish the results of these reviews and what is online. So, it is an opportunity to help shape future calls.
Search the EU portal.
Another tactic is to search the EU grants and tenders portal. The best way to do this is look for open and upcoming calls and then type in a few keywords or topics and see what arises.
You can search for Horizon Europe calls by going to this website: Funding & tenders (europa.eu)
This is what you see when you first come to the page for searching.
At first, it is best to do this as opposed to limiting your search to particular programmes. Then you may find grants in totally other areas that are relevant to what you want to build a project around.
Here you can see that by expanding the programme box you can choose to search just within certain programmes or clusters.
In principle, everything should appear in these searches, but it can be difficult. For example, sometimes when you paste the entire title of a call topic, you don’t easily find the call topic in the returned results.
So, search alone is not sufficient.
Sign up for the newsletters of your National Contact Point (NCP).
Each country has national contact points for Horizon Europe. These are meant to be experts that can help answer your questions about Horizon Europe. The NCPs often have newsletters or mailing lists. It’s worth signing up to the one for your country.
Then you will see news items about call topics.
You can find your countries national contact points here.
Liaise with your grants and contracts office.
Grants and contracts offices, as mentioned above, often have access to early information and often do periodically sift through the Horizon Europe calls to see what opportunities there may be. It is worthwhile to reach out to the office at your organization and let them know what type of research you are interested in.
How do you evaluate different Horizon Europe calls?
Once you find a call that sounds like it might be of interest, the first step is to quickly scan through the call topic text. These are not long documents, but they do tend to be densely written.
Pay attention to musts, coulds, shoulds, and must-haves.
What is the difference between outputs and outcomes?
It is important to understand some definitions before you begin. It is easy to assume that you know what the terms outcomes and impact mean, but it is important to be clear on these to make sense of the texts for Horizon Europe calls.
Outcomes are achievements that need to happen. Hence, the phrasing is “Actions under this topic must contribute to the following outcomes.” In a theory of change impact pathway, a concept underpins the structure of Horizon Europe proposals, the outcomes happen as a result of project outputs.
So, for example, in IHI call topic 7 states in the first section of the call topic text that the first expected outcome is: “Access for healthcare professionals to novel, robust and fit for purpose biomarkers.”
That is not something you are going to arrange in the project itself. Rather you are likely to provide the clinical studies, the biomarker testing, regulatory advice, an understanding of user perspectives, and perhaps a roadmap for further development of a given biomarker.
All of these contribute to the future outcome of access to biomarkers.
Outputs or deliverables are what you produce in the project. As such when you design your project it should be very clear how the outputs will contribute to the outcomes.
Scope.
The next section of the call topic is the scope. This is where the problem the call topic is addressing is defined followed by what a project should be doing and achieving in terms of outputs.
This determines both the what and what not of the project. This is where you need to judge if what you have in mind fits.
This section often includes a sense of the technology readiness level (TRL). This may not be mentioned specifically, but the idea is to define some sense of how close to implementation you are expected to bring the work.
If your interest is life sciences, this will be about defining whether it is to be discovery research vs. clinical. This is obviously important for the consortium you form and the project you want to develop.
Looking at the IHI call 7 topic three, they are very specific about the project bringing biomarkers into the point where they are in clinic and the project should not be focused on finding new biomarkers.
It may be that you are a researcher that wants to do more mechanistic and discovery work, if that is the case then this call is not one you should invest time and effort on.
When do you have to have impact?
Last is probably the most difficult part, the expected impacts.
Impacts are meant to be long term after the project and after the outcomes have been achieved. Think of the impact as the change you would see in the future after your project and likely many others have contributed to achieving all the outcomes.
It is important to look at impacts in these terms as otherwise you may be thinking it is not possible to achieve them in the time span of a four or five year project.
Impacts are also generally broad and defined by what Horizon Europe defines as destinations such as implementing digital tools boosting the European economy.
While the tendency may be to brush over these and plan to answer the impacts your project will have after you have designed it, that is a mistake. It is best to begin with impact in mind and design towards impact. It will make writing the impact section much easier.
Impact in funded consortium projects almost always includes aspects beyond excellent science. It is about building assets such as datasets, processes, standards, improved understanding, and awareness that help to expand the impact. Think more value for the funding.
So, going back to our example in the expected impact section, the mention as the expected impact:
“Biomarker-driven approaches”
It important to note that use of the word “approaches” implie not just validating biomarkers or increasing scientific understanding. An approach implies much more than a manuscript in a scientific journal.
One aspect that is almost always included is an increase in competitiveness of industries, and this should include creating environments where European industries can thrive.
This could include some sort of platform or a standard. Maybe it is a broad dataset that can be used in part of the biomarker validation efforts of start-ups.
Funding level.
The total budget can be a bit difficult to sort out.
Some call texts specify the budget directly, others it is in the finance section of the work programme or by clicking the box on the call page. The budget for a call topic is listed under the number for the call topic.
There will be a number expected to be funded and sometimes an expected total. So for our biomarker call topic example, the budget is 45 million, and they expect to fund three.
This shows how you would find the budget for a particular call. However, in this case it is not exactly correct. If you look on the IHI call page they are expecting to fund three proposals for call topic 3 not just one as this implies. So, when you are looking at partnerships always look at your partnership website.
This is an IHI call topic, and those tend to be larger projects. The typical consortium project is 5-6 million. If the one you are interested in is much less than that, check to see that it is not a coordinating and support action (CSA).
It is important to consider the scope and scale of the project you want to develop. Thie larger the project, the large the consortium, the more complex the project is likely to be. On the other hand larger projects represent more opportunity and are more likely to have a meaningful impact.
5 strategies to maximize your chances of finding the right Horizon Europe calls
Summarize your idea
Write a 3-4 sentence brief on the project you would like to do.
List out five keywords relevant to the research and the project you would like to set up. Remember though that Horizon Europe calls are less specific than they were before, so try some general keywords as well.
Let others know.
If your interest lies in the life sciences, send your brief to me. I won’t be able to actively search for you, but since we help develop several projects each year, I will often know offhand about suitable call topics scottwagers@biosciconsulting.com
Send the brief and your keywords to your grants and contracts office and the core group of your collaborators you would like to involve.
Apply to bottom-up Horizon Europe calls
Marie Sklodowska-Curie doctoral networks are a good example. Read this article to learn more about this approach.
This can help form your consortium and bring in funding while you continue your search for suitable call topics
Choose wisely.
When evaluating call texts, don’t be lured by a few keywords that align with your research. Horizon Europe calls are highly competitive, and trying to wedge your research into a call topic that does not really fit creates a disadvantage when you are writing a proposal that is difficult to overcome.
Get a copy of the relevant work programmes. Browse through the table of contents to get a sense of what projects are contained the titles are a good way to scan the call topics.
Review the ones that seem to align with your brief description. Read the call text through completely. Then reread the scope. Does your project fit in the scope is this something you could see you and your collaborators doing.
Copy the call text into word. Read it a third time highlighting items or text you think are important, then review one more time being more selecting and bolding items or text that is most relevant.
By doing this progressive highlighting, you are getting more familiar with the call text and all the subtle aspects within it.
If it seems to fit, then circulate it amongst a core group of potential consortium partners.
Email it to your grants and contracts office. They may have insights, and they may know of others going for the same call topic. They can also help you identify a writer or consultant that can help you pull the proposal together.
Search.
Periodically go to the fundings and tender portal and search for call topics entering key words as well as scanning entire clusters
Review the IHI website future call topics page
Conclusion
There is a wealth of opportunity in Horizon Europe calls. However, to tap into that opportunity, you have to do some proactive work.
Others can support you in this effort, but because Horizon Europe calls are specific, you as a researcher, SME owner, or leader in a medical nonprofit have to judge which calls are best suited to the research and innovation impact you want to have.
Horizon Europe calls are highly competitive, so you should take searching for suitable calls as part of your overall fund raising strategy.
If you have found a suitable call topic and you want to increase your chances of success while reducing the amount of effort you and your team will have to invest, I will be happy to meet with you to discuss how we can help.
