Horizon Europe - Performance

Programme in a nutshell

Concrete examples of achievements (*)

^{(*) Key achievements in the table state which period they relate to. Some come from the implementation of the predecessor programmes under the 2014-2020 multiannual financial framework. This is expected and due to the multiannual life cycle of EU programmes and the projects they finance, where results often follow only after completion of the programmes.}

Budget for 2021-2027

^{(*) Only Article 15(3) of the financial regulation.}

Rationale and design of the programme

Horizon Europe is the EU’s 7-year research and innovation programme, running from 2021 to 2027. The programme is designed to serve all the political priorities of the EU.

Budget

Budget programming (million EUR):

^{(*) Only Article 15(3) of the financial regulation.}

Financial programming:
- EUR 3.0 million (- 0%)
compared to the legal basis *

^{(*) Top-ups pursuant to Article 5 of the multiannual framework regulation are excluded from financial programming in this comparison.}

• The main Horizon Europe work programme 2023-2024 was adopted by the European Commission in December 2022 ⁽¹⁾. With around EUR 13.5 billion in funding, it will foster excellence in research and support the development of excellent doctoral programmes, support researchers in their training, career development and international and inter-sectoral mobility through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, build more connected and efficient European innovation ecosystems, create world-class research infrastructures, support the green and digital transitions and target global challenges while supporting European industrial competitiveness, including through the EU missions. Finally, it will widen participation in the programme and strengthen the European Research Area.
• More than EUR 600 million will be invested in the five EU missions in 2023. It is expected that missions raise contributions from other funding sources, to reach an overall level of investment at the end of 2023 that surpasses investments made from Horizon Europe.
• Response to the hardships and global energy market disruption: Nearly EUR 970 million of the main Horizon Europe work programme 2023-2024 will be invested to help speed up the clean energy transition, in line with the REPowerEU Plan, and increase Europe's energy independence from unreliable suppliers and volatile fossil fuels. 
• A sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic: In 2023, the work programme will direct investments of more than EUR 1 billion from NextGeneration EU towards Europe's recovery from the economic and social damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, it supports research and innovation with EUR 336 million to enhance pandemic preparedness and to respond to health emergencies. This is in line with the objectives of the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA).
• Targeted actions to support Ukraine. New actions include reinforcing the access of researchers from Ukraine to European research infrastructures, continuing support to the health scientists from Ukraine, and supporting the climate-neutral reconstruction of several Ukrainian cities through the EU Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities. This support is complementary to dedicated measures already launched in 2022 like ERA4Ukraine, Horizon4Ukraine, and ERC4Ukraine initiatives as well as MSCA4Ukraine a dedicated fellowship scheme of EUR 25 million under the Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions for displaced researchers of Ukraine. Among other support measures, the Ukrainian start-ups and deep tech SMEs will benefit from a targeted EUR 20 million action led by the European Innovation Council and EUR 6 million in other actions under cluster 2, work programme 2023-2024.
• International cooperation: The general openness of the Horizon Europe programme for non-EU country participation is combined with more ‘targeted actions’ in the work programmes, especially under pillar 2, in order to attract global excellence to the Horizon projects. The Horizon Europe main work programme 2023-2024 covers actions to support and strengthen international initiatives in renewable energies, agricultural and food systems, global health, environmental observations, ocean science diplomacy cooperation and more. In total, 22% of the call topics in the Horizon Europe main work programme 2023-2024 (compared to 20% in the 2021-2022 work programme) are earmarked as ‘particularly relevant for international cooperation’, hereby (strongly) encouraging and in some cases ‘requiring’ the involvement of non-associated non-EU country participants in the collaborative project consortia. Moreover, the work programme builds on the ‘Africa Initiative' and introduces the new ‘Mediterranean Initiative', responding to the new research and innovation agenda developed with the Union for the Mediterranean. Concerning cooperation with China, the work programme will focus on tackling global challenges through two research flagship initiatives on Food, Agriculture, and Biotechnology and Climate Change and Biodiversity. Openness to international cooperation is balanced with the need to safeguard EU interests in strategic areas, in particular to promote the EU's open strategic autonomy and its technological leadership and competitiveness. In this respect, Article 22.5 is applied to 31 topics in the Horizon Europe work programme 2023-2024 ⁽²⁾, mostly in Cluster 4, to limit certain actions to cooperation between identified eligible countries.
• In December 2022, the 2023 work programme ⁽³⁾ of the EIC has been adopted by the Commission, with funding opportunities of EUR 1.6 billion in 2023 for scientists and innovators to scale up breakthrough technologies and create new markets. The budget for the EIC Accelerator amounts to EUR 1.13 billion for start-ups and SMEs to develop and scale up high impact innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones. EUR 343 million will be allocated to EIC Pathfinder for multi-disciplinary research teams to undertake visionary research with the potential to lead to technology breakthroughs and creation of new deep tech start-ups. EUR 128.3 million is earmarked for EIC Transition to turn research results into innovation opportunities. The 2023 EIC work programme includes several novelties and pilot actions to support the New European Innovation Agenda, which will help Europe to develop new technologies to address societal challenges, and to bring them on the market.
• In July 2022, the ERC Work Programme for 2023 ⁽⁴⁾ with a total budget of around EUR 2.2 billion for grants was adopted by the European Commission. This amount will support more than a thousand top researchers across Europe. While the plan contains all the well-known grant schemes: Starting, Consolidator, Advanced and Synergy Grants, there are also new elements: the budget for the Proof of Concept grant scheme will increase from EUR 25 million to EUR 30 million; two additional grounds for extension of the eligibility windows for the candidates for Starting and Consolidator Grants will be introduced for researchers seeking asylum or being a victim of a natural disaster; a special grant – the ERC Science Journalism Initiative – will support journalists wishing to spend time at research institutions to better understand frontier research.
• With a budget of EUR 3 billion, the EIT’s new ambitious strategy for 2021 to 2027 reflects the needs of European innovation and will help Europe’s largest innovation ecosystems thrive. Building on its strong results and in line with the first Horizon Europe Strategic Plan, (2021-2024), the EIT’s plans and activities from 2023 to 2025 have been adopted by the EIT Governing in the ‘EIT Programming Document 2022 – 2024’ ⁽⁵⁾. The EIT will continue to support its Knowledge and Innovation Communities ⁽⁶⁾ (KICs) to strengthen the innovation ecosystems that tackle global challenges. It will do so by fostering the integration of education, research and business, thereby creating environments conducive to innovation, and by promoting and supporting a new generation of entrepreneurs and stimulating the creation of innovative companies in close synergy and complementarity with the EIC.

For 2023, the ‘European Capital of Innovation Awards’ (iCapital) will be awarded to European cities open to innovations that benefit their citizens. The contest is open for applications from 8 March until 29 June 2023. It will award a total of six prizes for two categories: the European Capital of Innovation and the Rising Innovative City. The city winning the 2023 European Capital of Innovation title will receive EUR 1 million. In the Rising Innovative City category, the winner will be rewarded with EUR 500 000.

^{(1) C(2022) 7550.}

^{(2) Compared to 49 topics in the Horizon Europe 2021-2022 Work Programme.}

^{(3) C(2022) 8600.}

^{(4) C(2022) 4861.}

^{(5) https://eit.europa.eu/sites/default/files/spd2023-2025.pdf}

^{(6) Our communities | European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) (europa.eu) – The KICs bring together businesses (industry and SMEs), research centres and universities as partners, creating an environment where creative thought and innovation flourishes.}

Budget performance – implementation

Multiannual cumulative implementation rate at the end of 2022 (million EUR):

Annual voted budget implementation (million EUR)⁽¹⁾:

^{(1) Voted appropriations (C1) only.}

Contribution to horizontal priorities

Green budgeting

Contribution to green budgeting priorities (million EUR):

Research and innovation play a central role in the green transition in accelerating and navigating the necessary transitions deploying, demonstrating and engaging citizens in innovation.

The Horizon Europe regulation states that ‘actions under this programme shall contribute at least 35% of the expenditure to climate objectives.’ At the end of 2022, the preliminary figures indicate that Horizon Europe has contributed 33% of the 2021 and 2022 operational budgets to climate action. The figures for 2023-2024 have been estimated from the 2023-2024 work programmes. The figures for 2025-2027 are based on an estimated 35.0% climate contribution, reflecting the minimum target as per the Horizon Europe legal basis. All figures are based on estimates for the whole duration of the Horizon Europe programme and will be updated with actual figures based on an ex post assessment as soon as these become available. Corrective measures, where necessary, will then be proposed to ensure that the overall Horizon Europe contribution to climate reaches 35%.

Based on the preliminary ex post estimations, 7% of Horizon Europe spending has been allocated to address biodiversity for the 2021-2022 period. The target of the multiannual financial framework and the ambition of Horizon Europe is to reach 10% of spending on biodiversity by 2026-2027, which implies that more efforts will be needed in order to achieve this.

Based on the preliminary estimations, 4.1% of Horizon Europe spending has been allocated to address clean air for the 2021-2024 period.

Gender

Contribution to gender equality (million EUR) (*):

<sup>(*) Based on the applied gender contribution methodology, the following scores are attributed at the most granular level of intervention possible:
- 2: interventions the principal objective of which is to improve gender equality;
- 1: interventions that have gender equality as an important and deliberate objective but not as the main reason for the intervention;
- 0: non-targeted interventions (interventions that are expected to have no significant bearing on gender equality);
- 0*: score to be assigned to interventions with a likely but not yet clear positive impact on gender equality.</sup>

Gender equality is a cross-cutting principle in Horizon Europe and the integration of the gender dimension in research and innovation content is a requirement by default. The Horizon Europe legal basis sets the strengthening of the integration of the gender dimension in research and innovation content as an operational objective across the whole programme.

Most 2021 projects are just starting and many 2022 projects have not yet started, so until there are project reviews that allow to determine whether they have actually integrated a gender dimension and to what extent, we attributed a 0* score by default to all of Horizon Europe, except for topics and actions for which the gender relevance is explicitly mentioned or clearly not addressed nor impacted.

Score 2

If the principal objective of the project is explicitly to improve gender equality, a score of 2 is attributed. A selection of some examples:

Under the European Institute of Innovation and Technology:

• 2021: EUR 3.054 million (score 2) for Knowledge and Innovation Community expenditures directly related to supporting female entrepreneurship (e.g. Girls Go Circular, Women Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, Women entrepreneurs in Agri-food sector, Women in Urban Mobility).
• 2022: EUR 4 million (score 2), including Supernovas, the cross-Knowledge and Innovation Community project with strategic synergies for female entrepreneurship.
• Under the European Innovation Council:
• 2021: EUR 2 420 600 (score 2) for the Women Leadership Programme (EUR 70 600), EU Prize for Women Innovators (EUR 350 000) and the transfer of EUR 2 million to the European Innovation Ecosystems budget for Women Tech EU.

Score 1

A Gender Marker Score 1 is attributed to projects that will contribute in some way to gender equality, but not significantly. A selection of some examples:

Under EU Missions:

• 2021: EUR 125 650 million (score 1) under the Cancer Mission;
• 2022: EUR 110 million (score 1) under the Cancer Mission.

Under Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions:

This bottom-up programme encourages gender equality in research teams and requires that gender be integrated into research and innovation content. It is too early to provide consolidated figures for projects having a gender equality dimension, and a number of 2022 calls have yet to be evaluated. However, based on project abstracts including ‘gender’ as a keyword, the following budgets can already be attributed a score of 1:

• 2021: EUR 47 938 million;
• 2022: EUR 14 653 million.

Score 0*

Following the start of Horizon Europe in 2021, most projects that signed up in 2021 are just starting. For projects signed in 2022, many have yet to start. As long as the projects are not properly implementing activities, the project reviews that allow to determine whether they have actually integrated a gender dimension and to what extent cannot take place. Therefore we attributed a 0* score by default to all of Horizon Europe, except for topics and actions for which gender relevance is mentioned or is clearly not present.

Score 0

A score of 0 is attributed to projects that are not expected to contribute noticeably to gender equality.

Digital

Contribution to digital transition (million EUR):

• Horizon Europe investments in the digital transformation for 2021-2022 are up to EUR 9 069.2 million, which represents 33% of the Horizon Europe budget. As the Horizon Europe estimates refer to biannual 2021-2022 work programmes, the figures indicated in the table correspond to the split of half of the value to get a reference per year. This figure includes contributions to developing digital solutions/applications in different economic sectors. The contribution to core digital (general-purpose) technologies amounts to EUR 4 184 2 million for 2021-2022.

Budget performance – outcomes

A performance framework using key impact pathways has been designed to monitor the programme’s progress towards reaching its general objective. It covers the whole life cycle of a funded research and innovation activity, from outputs to impacts, depending on the period of time to which indicators are assigned (short-, medium- or long-term). To measure the performance in the first phase of the programme’s life cycle, the reporting will concentrate on output indicators. After 2 years of implementation, there are not enough data available to generate reliable performance results. The funded projects have just started, so they cannot generate meaningful performance data.

Following this, the first performance results obtained in 2022 are available from direct actions carried out by the Joint Research Centre and from indirect activities related to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. Performance assessments will be provided once the implementation of the 2021-2027 programme has progressed further.

MFF 2014-2020 – Horizon 2020

Horizon 2020 – the eighth framework programme funding research, technological development and innovation – was established as a means of putting the EU at the heart of world-class science and innovation, making it more competitive and creating economic growth and new jobs.

Budget implementation

Cumulative implementation rate at the end of 2022 (million EUR):

Performance assessment

• Many Horizon 2020 projects are still ongoing, as reflected by the payment rate (88%), which explains why some targets have a deadline after 2020. The Horizon 2020 performance will be measured until the last initiatives financed under Horizon 2020 are finished, i.e. several years after the formal end of the programme in 2020. Overall, Horizon 2020 has made good progress towards achieving scientific impacts by improving research and innovation capacity, scientific excellence and reputation and by integrating research and innovation efforts. The results indicate that, in most areas, Horizon 2020 has achieved its targets or even exceeded them. No indicator deserves special attention.

• The initiatives under the programme as far as the ‘Excellent science’ pillar is concerned are very satisfactory. Since 2014, the share of publications from European Research Council-funded projects among the top 1% most cited has remained high, at about 7%, considerably exceeding the target of 1.8%. Future and emerging technologies have already generated more than 20.2 publications in peer-reviewed journals per EUR 10 million of funding, and about one patent per EUR 10 million of funding, thus approaching the targets. The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions scheme has exceeded its target of 65 000 researchers, including 25 000 PhD students. Since 2014, 115 053 supported researchers have had access to research infrastructures, including e-infrastructures, both remotely and physically, thus far exceeding the target.

• The initiatives under the ‘Industrial leadership’ pillar have progressed well. In this respect, projects on leadership in enabling and industrial technologies have produced more than 9 000 public–private publications. 197% of participating firms have introduced innovations ‘new to the company or the market’ with the potential to generate scientific breakthroughs, which almost meets the target of 200% (including private companies beyond the beneficiaries involved in the project). As regards patents, the result of 0.85 patent applications per EUR 10 million of funding shows that it is progressing slowly towards the target of 3. This is normal, since patents are generally filed at the end of projects. Under the ‘access to risk finance’ activities, more than 32 000 organisations have been funded, and the total investment mobilised via debt financing and venture capital investments is EUR 71 billion, exceeding the targets. The instruments for small and medium-sized enterprises have generated around 2 545 jobs.

• On the other hand, the ‘Societal challenges’ pillar shows moderate progress. So far, the initiatives under this pillar have generated about 9 910 public–private publications and 83 900 innovations, including prototypes and testing activities. However, the number of peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals per EUR 10 million of funding and the number of patent applications per EUR 10 million of funding are lower than the respective targets. Nevertheless, we expect to see better performance results following the end of the projects, when publications and patents generally start to appear.

• Overall, the results to date show that 82% of the indicators have achieved their target. However, 18% of the indicators indicate that the progression is not as foreseen. It concerns the productivity of patents and publications peer-reviewed in high-impact journals in the ‘Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies’ and ‘Societal challenges’ priorities. There are many factors that can lead to underperformance, and it is important to identify and address these factors in order to improve research outcomes, where necessary. However, considering that Horizon 2020 is finished and calls are no longer published, the margin of manoeuvre to make adjustments is very limited, if not impossible. However, the conclusions should be used to steer the performance of the next programme. Some possible explanations for underperformance of the programme are described below.

• The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on research around the world, leading to delays and disruptions in many researchers’ work. There are several key factors that can help to contextualise and explain the situation.
  Limited access to research facilities and equipment: Many researchers have been unable to access laboratories, libraries and other research facilities due to COVID-19-related closures and restrictions. This has made it difficult to carry out experiments, collect data and conduct other research activities, leading to delays and disruptions in research projects.
  Changes in research priorities: The pandemic has led to changes in research priorities, with many research projects being postponed, cancelled or redirected to focus on COVID-19-related research. This has affected researchers in all fields, including those who were working on projects that were not directly related to the pandemic. For instance, in the field of health, some Horizon 2020 projects have been reoriented to deal with the emergency. The pandemic-caused disruptions impacted the projects in different ways: for example, a clinical trial cannot be interrupted without serious consequences for the project. On the other hand, a technological development project can be resumed once the crisis has passed, without the need to repeat some research activities. Therefore, significant delays and failures are expected. These factors are beyond the control of individual researchers.

• Inappropriate targets: It is important to set targets that are challenging but attainable, and to review them regularly to ensure that they remain relevant and achievable. The Horizon 2020 targets for the ‘Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies’ and ‘Societal challenges’ priorities were set in 2011 ⁽¹⁾ in the context of the Commission proposal for the Horizon 2020 regulation as mentioned in the 2014 EU draft budget, with reference to the previous performance of the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme. At that time, less than 10% of Seventh Framework Programme projects had started to produce results as the programme was still running (2007-2013). As the full data were not available when the targets for Horizon 2020 were set, the level of performance of the Seventh Framework Programme was not representative, therefore this made difficult to set realistic targets for Horizon 2020. Moreover, as regards the indicator ‘Publications in peer-reviewed high impact’, at that time, the target was estimated on the basis of data collected on peer-reviewed publications but not restricted to the 'high-impact' ones.

• Design of Horizon 2020: Another aspect to be considered is the design of Horizon 2020 in comparison to the Seventh Framework Programme. In Horizon 2020, a large part of basic research is covered by the pillar ‘Excellence’, aiming to reinforce and extend the excellence of the EU’s science base. The part focused on societal challenges has therefore moved away from basic/frontier research towards applied research. Moreover, it is not uncommon for grants under the pillar ‘Excellence’, like the European Research Council grants, to produce more scientific publications than in applied research. Basic research often involves the development of new concepts, theories, and models that can have wide-ranging implications for a particular field. This can lead to a greater number of publications, as researchers seek to build on and refine these ideas. Applied research, on the other hand, often involves the testing and application of existing theories and concepts to real-world problems. While this can lead to important discoveries and advancements, it may not always result in as many publications as basic research. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the overall performance in terms of publication peer reviewed per EUR 10 million funded by Horizon 2020 is higher than that of the Seventh Framework Programme.

• As a result, on one hand the pandemic has affected the research projects, such as causing delays in data collection or changes to funding priorities. On the other hand, the timing of target-setting for Horizon 2020 lead to inappropriate targets for Horizon 2020. Therefore, these specific factors contribute to explain the perceived underperformance.

• Following the recommendations by the Internal Audit Service on the performance framework and to ensure the quality of data, a deep analysis on the Horizon 2020 data was initiated for the programme performance statement indicators. After internal investigations, we noticed that the methodology to extract the data needed to be revised in order to ensure accuracy and reliability. Therefore, it has been decided to continue the investigation on the data sources that provide the performance information. The data collection method is being revised to be more accurate. Following these considerations, the figures for 2022 cannot be reported in the programme performance statement. The correct data will soon be available on the dedicated Horizon 2020 dashboard and will be inserted in the next programme performance statement.

^{(1) Legal Financial Statement attached to COM/2011/0809.}

Contribution to the sustainable development goals