European Partnership Help Center

Horizon Europe requires every partnership to prepare a strategy describing how it will continue after EU framework programme funding ends. The aim is to secure the legacy of the partnership, ensure continuity of its activities and strengthen its resilience. The strategy helps partnerships identify alternative sources of public or private funding and to plan for the transition to these sources. It is therefore a key criterion in the lifecycle of the partnership and will be reviewed by the European Commission.

The Horizon Europe regulation requires monitoring and evaluation of the entire framework programme. Data for projects funded under partnerships are stored in the CORDA database and feed into evaluations. Two evaluations are foreseen: an interim evaluation published in April 2025 and an ex-post evaluation after the programme’s completion.  Evaluations assess relevance, coherence, efficiency, effectiveness and EU added value, and they use the Key Impact Pathways framework to capture scientific, societal and economic impacts. External experts may contact partnerships for additional information during these exercises.

Challenges include missing or inconsistent data, differing interpretations of terms such as ‘additional activities’, lack of clear causality between actions and impacts, and difficulties in demonstrating contributions to policy goals. Partnerships should invest resources early to build capacity for data collection and evaluation. The European Commission is working to clarify terms and simplify evidence collection, and ERA‑LEARN did organise training sessions on monitoring and evaluation that partnerships should take advantage of. When developing partnership specific impact pathways, partnerships should ensure alignment with standard evaluation terminology and limit the number of indicators to those that are meaningful, measurable and manageable.

The Biennial Monitoring Report is published every two years and aggregates evidence on the performance and added value of European Partnerships. Partnerships contribute data through the Common Indicators Survey, which covers indicators aligned with the Horizon Europe lifecycle criteria, and through partnership fiches and country fiches. The report supports strategic discussions on the partnership instrument and complements internal monitoring and evaluation. Four editions are planned for 2022, 2024, 2026 and 2028, and participation in evidence gathering is mandatory for partnerships.

An effective monitoring and evaluation system requires continuous data collection based on clear indicators. Partnerships should implement streamlined and continuous monitoring to collect the right data at the right time. The Revised Research and Innovation Partnership Evaluation (R²IPE) toolkit provides guidance on monitoring systems, intervention logic, evaluation timing and questions, data collection and analysis. Evaluations may be formative (improving implementation) or summative (assessing outcomes), and they should be supported by robust data and independent expertise. Partnership‑specific impact pathways and key performance indicators should align with the Horizon Europe Key Impact Pathways and be integrated into lifecycle plans.

Monitoring and evaluation operate at three levels. At the partnership level, progress towards expected objectives and impacts is assessed, covering implementation, management and governance. At the instrument level, the Strategic Coordinating Process provides policymakers with evidence on the impacts and added value of partnerships, drawing on the Biennial Monitoring Report and other sources. At the framework programme level, the Horizon Europe regulation requires monitoring and evaluation of the entire programme, including partnerships; data for projects funded under partnerships must be stored in a single database, and evaluations consider better regulation criteria and Key Impact Pathways.