Country Reports

This page hosts the ERA-LEARN Country Reports. The Country reports analyse the participation of countries in European R&I partnerships. This draws upon the data available in the ERA-LEARN database and a number of interviews with key stakeholders in the country including individual researchers that have benefited from partnership-supported projects.

The country reports provide an analysis of participation and try to explain the ‘performance’ of a country in European R&I Partnerships within the context of their own national and regional research and innovation systems. Thus, additional sources of information and data are combined in the analysis including, for instance, the EU Semester national reports; ERA Progress Reports; the European Innovation Scoreboard; H2020 Country Reviews; OECD country reviews; OECD and EUROSTAT statistics; special reports by the Policy Support facility; and MLE (Mutual Learning Exercise) special reports.

The goal of the country reports is to provide an overall picture of a country’s performance in terms of partnership participation, comparing this not only to EU14, EU13 and EU27 averages but also to the performance of a group of comparator countries with similar research and innovation profiles. The hope is that these reports are useful not only for organisations within the country of interest, which may only have a fragmented picture of the situation, but also for organisations in other countries that wish to learn the reasons underpinning the ‘position’ of a particular country and/or learn from the exemplary performance of other countries.

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Until now 11 country reports have been published covering Poland, Spain, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Germany, Estonia, France, Austria, Slovenia and Italy. The selection of these countries was based on a combination of variables: interest expressed by the country, number of partnership participations and partnership coordination, and national investments made to date, based on the data provided by the partnerships to the ERA-LEARN database.

A summary of each report is provided here, with links to the full reports at the side of this page.

Italy is a very active Member State in both Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe partnerships, with participation in nearly all available initiatives and a notable increase in national financial commitments. Italy’s strengths in scientific excellence, alignment of national priorities with EU missions, and strong institutional involvement, particularly from public research organisations and SMEs, is evident. A distinguishing feature is Italy’s active promotion of regional participation, making it one of the few countries to systematically involve regional authorities and align Smart Specialisation Strategies with partnership themes. The country also demonstrates strategic leadership in initiatives with territorial relevance, such as PRIMA, reinforcing its role in addressing regional and cross-border challenges. Their remains, however, persistent weaknesses, including complex national administrative procedures, delays in funding disbursement, and rigid financial rules, which create barriers to efficient implementation. Despite these challenges, Italy’s proactive and inclusive approach to partnership participation positions it as a key contributor to the European R&I landscape, with significant potential to shape future collaborative agendas both within the EU and beyond.

Slovenia recognises international R&I cooperation, especially through European Partnerships, as crucial for its innovation goals and has made several structural changes that are envisaged to improve the national R&I system and performance including in European Partnerships. While acknowledging the strategic importance and numerous benefits of partnerships, certain challenges exist including funding constraints, administrative burdens, information overload, and limited visibility of results. Slovenia is actively working to address these challenges. Backed up by the changes already made and those planned, Slovenia has a high potential to strengthen its performance in partnerships. At the EU level, concerns were raised about the number and complexity of partnerships, the need for standardization and for a central information hub, and the allocation of funding.

Austria is one of the leading countries in the partnership landscape with strong performance, high national coordination and integration of the partnership instrument to exploit its potential to the full. The pass from Horizon 2020 to Horizon Europe was
marked by the almost three-fold increase of the national contributions, and a more strategic and inclusive approach to partnerships also involving sectorial ministries. 

France, like Germany, Spain or Italy, presents a high level of participation and funded projects. France enjoys a mission-oriented policy approach that very much favours a leading position in both the European partnerships and the wider EU policies discourse. National coordination in the R&I policy arena is high and there are structures enabling wide consultation and mobilisation of research actors in international cooperation. Transnational/international collaboration has always been a high-level priority for France, which has taken a number of initiatives driving developments in European Partnerships. French researchers appreciate the opportunities for collaboration especially with non-EU countries as well as with those that have been less addressed in the past. Although there are several areas of improvement and certain issues persist in the new partnerships established under Horizon Europe, France shows strong commitment in exploiting the partnership instrument to the full.

Estonia has a strong international profile compared to other EU13 countries and the expertise in certain areas, e.g. medical and health sciences, including personal medicine and genetics is widely acknowledged. It is common belief that there are challenges that cannot be tackled by any single country alone, and international collaboration is key, especially for a country with a small research community like Estonia. It is also acknowledged that partnerships provide a valuable space for mutual policy learning and for shaping and aligning policies in relation to research and innovation, and thus strengthening the ERA. Although there is strong commitment to internationalisation, Estonia has yet to exploit the benefits of the European R&I partnerships to the full. Based on local researchers, Partnerships present a clear added value for Estonia, a country that lacks national (bilateral) alternatives supporting international research collaboration. The small-scale consortia and the broadly defined call topics are much appreciated.

Germany is the leader in terms of engagement and performance in public R&I partnerships. This is due to a well-funded national R&I system with world- famous research actors whose expertise covers a wide range of research areas. Although the funds committed per researcher are not that large, Germany makes the largest investment in comparison to the other countries, even though the funds made available are considered limited in some cases. German researchers appreciate the opportunities offered by partnerships for international collaboration and clearly see the added value in relation to national programmes or Horizon 2020. The new approach to partnerships is a clear improvement in relation to the past, although certain challenges going forward are envisaged.

Norway performs well in terms of its active involvement in European R&I Partnerships, with the funds committed per researcher by far exceeding the levels committed by its peers. Moreover, Norwegian researchers highly appreciate the opportunity to participate in and benefit from European and international collaboration. Although some challenges going forward are envisaged, including those associated with navigating a relatively complicated landscape and coping with large variations in the way partnerships are run, the new approach to partnerships under Horizon Europe is nevertheless considered to be a step in the right direction.

In Finland, P2P R&I Partnerships are appreciated by Finnish Ministries, Funding Agencies as well as the local researchers. However, Finland exploits these initiatives to a rather moderate extent, albeit to different degrees across the partnerships. Strengthening Finland’s international attractiveness is acknowledged as a challenge that Finland has to face and certain measures have been decided including the increase of public R&D funds. The efforts of the EC in streamlining the implementation processes and clearing up the landscape are also expected to help an increased Finnish engagement in the future. Finnish researchers appreciate the low administrative burden in projects supported by P2P partnerships under Horizon 2020 and the multidisciplinary approach required. The smaller scale of the projects also seems to work as a stepping stone in applying in larger programmes but is also valued as such as it enables true collaboration and trust building.

Belgium is among the most engaged countries, investing significantly and benefiting considerably in comparison with other peer countries. Albeit the differences in the local R&I systems across the different Belgian regions, overall, Belgium retains a solid position that European R&I Partnerships are beneficial to the local research communities. European public R&I Partnerships are also much appreciated by Finnish Ministries, funding agencies as well as local researchers. However, Finland exploits these initiatives to a rather moderate extent, albeit to different degrees from one partnership to another. The efforts of the EC in streamlining the implementation processes and clearing up the landscape are expected to help an increased Finnish engagement in the future.

The Spanish report showed the leading position of Spain in participating in public R&I partnerships, investing significantly but also benefiting relatively more than other countries. Spain is determined to retain a strong engagement, although certain rigidities at national level and complexities from the diverse administration of partnerships make it difficult to fully exploit their potential.

Poland shows a dynamic performance and the participation in European/international research collaboration is high in the policy agenda. Yet, the partnerships still enjoy rather low visibility, which calls for increased attention in raising awareness in the research community that seem to prefer simpler national and other collaboration schemes such as bilateral agreements. Providing incentives for international collaboration to the national research community would also be another area of improvement while streamlining the partnership landscape and simplifying participation. Unsurprisingly, the overpopulated partnership landscape and the lack of harmonised rules for participation across the different partnerships was noted in all country reports. To this end, the new EU strategy for partnerships under Horizon Europe has been welcomed and in several cases is inspiring a more coordinated national approach.

Some overall conclusions: the performance of a country does not necessarily reflect the level of the country’s leadership in research and innovation. Although, strong support in international collaboration may be evidenced in the policy discourse, this may not be reflected in the budgets made available. In some cases, there is need to raise awareness and provide incentives to national researchers to collaborate internationally. However, it is also true that the rate of return (i.e. number of proposals approved with national participation divided by the number of proposals submitted) can also be affected by other than scientific merit criteria such as the small budget made available by certain countries which may jeopardise approval of proposals although of high-quality. This is rather discouraging for the affected countries. At the same time, national rigidities and incompatibilities may hinder full exploitation of the potential that partnerships offer. Notwithstanding, partnerships are indeed acknowledged as useful vehicles for internationalising the profile of the national research communities and benefiting from increased collaboration in research and innovation within Europe and beyond. There is abundance of anecdotal evidence justifying the added value of partnerships and the new, strategic and long-term approach in Horizon Europe is clearly a step in the right direction in fully exploiting partnerships both as a funding instrument and a policy approach.

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