European Partnership Help Center

“Policy assumptions” refer to the underlying policy conditions or trends your scenarios are built on: for example, the continuing relevance of a thematic area, emerging EU priorities, or evolving regulatory contexts. These assumptions help make scenarios realistic and coherent with likely policy developments, without requiring you to predict them. They should be transparent and updated as the policy landscape evolves.

There are no restrictions in AI use in proposal preparation, however, applicants take full responsibility for the contents of the proposal, and are expected to check and ensure that there are no errors introduced due to AI use. Applicants can use AI to prepare a proposal, but expert evaluators may not use such tools when evaluating a proposal.

The Horizon Europe Regulation (Art. 2(36)) states that programme co-fund actions are implemented by “legal entities managing or funding R&I programmes,” so any legal entity that is eligible for funding may become a beneficiary of a programme co-fund action implementing a co-funded partnership. Which countries are eligible for funding is described in Annex B of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes. Specific eligibility conditions may be included in the respective call text. However, in co-funded partnerships, national/regional funding bodies/agencies and ministries are usually acting as the core group of beneficiaries, but research performing organisation and private organisations might also be involved in the consortium. The important point is that the consortium is able to implement the work as proposed under the partnership. Information on organisations involved in existing co-funded partnerships can be found in the ERA LEARN database.

The key difference lies in the implementation structure. Institutionalised , or treaty-based partnerships, are implemented through dedicated bodies (for example, Joint Undertakings) with a deeper level of integration and a distinct legal basis (Art. 185/187 of TFEU and the EIT legal acts for 2021-2027). Partnerships under Art. 185 involve public-public networks with Member States and Associated States leading the partnership, while Art. 187 allows networks to partner up with both the private sector (e.g. industry associations) and public partners (such as the Chips Joint Undertaking). Co-funded partnerships , on the other hand, are established through a Grant Agreement between a consortium of partners and the EU, following the successful submission of a proposal under a Horizon Europe Work Programme topic.

This exercise of phasing-out strategies does not impact the reporting requirements for the biennial monitoring reports

The development of a phasing-out strategy is an ex-ante criterion. For co-programmed partnerships, it should already be in place before the Horizon Europe mid-term evaluation (April 2025). The December draft already provides a postponed timeline