European Partnerships in the Interim Evaluation of Horizon Europe
The Interim Evaluation of Horizon Europe was published by the European Commission on 30 April 2025, including an assessment of European Partnerships against their underlying criteria. The overall tone is positive, highlighting their leverage effect, pooling of resources and long-term cooperation. At the same time, however, it highlights challenges such as complexity, bureaucracy and lack of resources.
Key Findings from the Interim Evaluation
- European Partnerships provide EU added value through the development of long-lasting knowledge networks.
- The closer integration of European Partnerships into the programme has had positive effects: evidence from two evaluation support studies suggests that some areas covered by the partnerships are now better coordinated. This in turn has led to a significant increase in public funding from EU Member States and a stronger collaboration at programme level.
- Looking at co-investment alone, European Partnerships leverage more resources than the rest of the Framework Programme. If all European Partnerships are excluded, the leverage factor for the ‘mainstream’ programme is around 0.09, equivalent to EUR 2.96 billion of co-investment. For partnerships as a whole, the leverage factor for project activities is 0.62 (EUR 7.22 billion).
- The transparency and openness of the European Partnerships has improved. SMEs and participants from widening states still face some challenges.
- In terms of international positioning and visibility, European Partnerships have taken different approaches depending on their strategic objectives. According to the Biennial Monitoring Report (BMR), 23 partnerships have allocated a budget for cooperation with partners outside the EU. Despite their efforts, external evaluations of the partnerships have identified the following obstacles:
- lack of sufficient financial resources to engage effectively with international partners,
- concerns about the competitiveness of European industry,
- geopolitical issues and demands for technological sovereignty and
- the absence of a well-defined strategy for international collaboration.
- The fragmented monitoring of European Partnerships, and in some cases the reliance on ad hoc reporting exercises, has had a negative effect on the extent to which partnership performance has been evaluated.
- The valorisation of research and development results remains a challenge. The involvement of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) in academies provides unique support for skills building and learning.
- European Partnerships successfully contribute to the EU policy objectives.
- Further efforts are needed to improve the monitoring of European Partnerships. The coherence and quality of data varies greatly between the different types of partnerships. The use of a common system should become a prerequisite for the launch of all partnerships. Alternative approaches have led to significant delays in reporting and a considerable administrative burden.
- In addition, a full list of the members of Joint Undertakings (JUs), institutionalised European Partnerships and co-programmed European Partnerships should be made publicly available so that an independent assessment can be made of the extent to which partners are meeting their legal obligations to contribute to research activities.
Published Documents
Evaluation reports on individual European Partnerships can be found in the Annexes of the Interim Evaluation of Horizon Europe, including: Chips JU, Circular Bio-based Europe JU, Clean Aviation JU, Clean Hydrogen JU, Europe’s Rail JU, EuroHPC JU, Global Health EDCTP3 JU, Innovative Health Initiative JU, SESAR 3 JU, Smart Networks and Services JU, EIT KIC Climate, EIT KIC Digital, EIT KIC Food, EIT KIC Health, EIT KIC InnoEnergy, EIT KIC Manufacturing, EIT KIC Raw Materials, EIT KIC Urban Mobility and the European Partnership on Metrology.