Drop in the Horizon 2020 grant success
24 Apr 2015 by Evoluted New Media
The EU Research and Innovation programme – Horizon 2020 – have announced that the average grant success rates are much lower than expected. The average success rate in the first 14 months of the multibillion euro programme is just 14.5% – lower than previous programmes. Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) and aims to provide funding for new projects in the field of science, industrial leadership and societal challenges.
At the Science Business conference, Wolfgang Burtscher – Deputy Director General for Research and Innovation at the European Commission – revealed that the odds for success are different for each part of the programme. In some parts, for example the success rate of food competitions is 13.3 %, down from 18.1 % during Horizon 2020’s predecessor, the Seventh Framework Programme.
The Director General explained that the reason for the dropping success rate is based on the higher application rate. Also, the success percentages are based on the 26,321 proposals that have been concluded and evaluated up to 25th February. This is not the total overall number of applications received which stands at over 45,000.
“Things are in constant movement,” said Burtscher at the Science Business conference.
Of the evaluated proposals, 400 were considered ineligible and discarded. There are 3,765 approved proposals, which translate into around €6.6 billion in awarded money.
