Building on the Horizon 2020 simplified rules and measures, the Commission has worked and continues to work on the Horizon Europe Implementation Strategy, aiming at making the programme even more attractive. The strategy will work on making the ambitious objectives of Horizon Europe achievable and, being a living document, it will continue to receive further updates.
It is the aim of the Commission to enhance the efficiency of the impact of Horizon Europe. That impact will also need to be as user-friendly as possible. As a result, the Horizon Europe Implementation Strategy document portraits the carefully designed rules and efficient processes that will apply across the entire programme and project life cycle.
Here are the main focal points of the strategy:
- Maximising impacts, because more has to be done to boost and focus the impact of European R&I spending, and Horizon Europe has been conceived with this in mind. The programme has high-level objectives that cut across the programme, pathways to impact addressed at every level, and special arrangements envisaged to implement the new high-impact schemes such as missions and the EIC;
- Ensuring greater transparency and further simplification, by maintaining and building on the substantial improvements made under Horizon 2020, while capitalising on lessons learned, and taking advantage of modern and innovative approaches;
- Fostering synergies with other EU spending programmes, to ensure that we can implement in practice the legal provisions built into Horizon Europe and the reciprocal arrangements in sister programmes across the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), capitalising also on the Commission-wide priority-setting established through strategic planning;
- Easing access through digital transformation and outreach, to ensure that the whole implementation is designed in a joined-up and holistic way, supported by modern outreach channels and practices and robust electronic platforms and tools for engaging stakeholders along the programme life-cycle, increasing communication on data and results and exploiting new approaches as these mature, including Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The strategy for Horizon Europe was validated, refined and developed by the European Commission based on the feedback they received from stakeholders, studies, comprehensive consultation, internal analysis of needs and certain co-design processes. Those processes include:
- An open web consultation;
- Stakeholder consultations in the Member States by way of 20 national/regional events;
- European R&I Days in Brussels on 24-26 September 2019.
Monitoring and Reporting
The orientations and measures described in the official draft strategy are firmed-up, steps that will be taken to ensure that progress in deployment is tracked and reported, bottlenecks are addressed, and re-orientations agreed as and when necessary. A consolidated progress report will be made available in the second semester of 2020.
Background
Horizon Europe is the new European Financial Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. The programme will run from 2021 to 2027 The Strategy will run for the entire lifespan of Horizon Europe.
