European Partnership Help Center

Synergies arise when the combined results of different programmes exceed the impact of each individually. Additional activities can foster synergies by coordinating governance structures, organising joint calls or topics, hosting cross initiative assemblies, clustering projects, exchanging results and making formal commitments. The Horizon Europe regulation and strategic plan encourage partnerships to pursue synergies with other partnerships, missions and funding instruments, and ERA‑LEARN provides guidance and a toolbox on mechanisms for synergy creation. While synergies can be challenging due to limited resources and differing procedures, they can lead to efficient public spending, better implementation and stronger policy impact.

The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda or its annexes describe the expected additional activities and the indicators used to monitor them. Quantitative and qualitative targets may include the number of capacity‑building actions, the amount of national co-funding mobilised and the number of follow up projects. These activities are tracked at both partnership and national levels using key performance indicators and are reported through the Biennial Monitoring Report. Proper monitoring helps demonstrate the added value of the partnership beyond funding.

Additional activities are actions that implement the partnership beyond joint calls. They include capacity building, training, workshops, development of research infrastructures, data analysis, stakeholder engagement, policy alignment, communication and networking. These activities are defined in the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda and explained in the work programme, ensuring that they align with both European and national priorities. They mobilise resources at national level and contribute to the partnership’s impact by fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange.

Funding organisations are responsible for preparing contracts with the selected transnational consortia. They must ensure that the obligations set out in the grant agreement concerning conflicts of interest, confidentiality, ethics, visibility, information and record keeping also apply to the third‑party recipients. The granting authority, the European Anti‑Fraud Office and the Court of Auditors must retain their rights of access and audit with respect to recipients. Some funding agencies may encourage or require final recipients to sign a consortium agreement among themselves to ensure compliance with these obligations.

Because national commitments are collected before a call is launched, demand often exceeds available national budgets. Partnerships may agree in their consortium agreement to use a portion of the EU contribution to ‘fill gaps’ in the selection list, thereby funding additional projects that would otherwise be unfunded. The consortium can define a range for gap filling in the consortium agreement and determine the exact amount after the final ranking list is available. Any flexible allocation must preserve the overall EU funding rate set out in the grant agreement and be transparent to all partners.

Proposals are typically submitted in two stages. In the first step, national or regional funding organisations conduct eligibility checks to ensure that applicants meet both Horizon Europe and national rules. In the second step, proposals are evaluated using standard award criteria and ranked. Where several proposals receive identical scores, those from countries with available funding may be prioritised to maximise the number of funded projects. An independent observer compiles a report on the evaluation process, and only proposals appearing on the ranking list can be funded.