Getting Started: European Commission Publishes Draft Work Programmes 2018-2020

The European Commission is starting to publish the first drafts of the Horizon 2020 work programme for 2018-2020. The drafts are made public to provide potential participants with the currently expected main lines of this work programme. The drafts for Future and Emerging Technologies and Information and Communication Technologies can now be downloaded on the European Commission website with the remaining sections to follow soon. The adoption and publication of the final programme is expected in October 2017.

This final Horizon 2020 period provides more than EUR 30 billion funding thus representing a significant increase compared to the previous ones. Preparations for the work programme 2018-2020 began in 2016 with stakeholder consultations and discussions with Member States on priorities, which have been outlined in informal working documents, namely 17 thematic scoping papers and one overarching document.

Impact and horizontal activities more important than ever

In most of the fields covered by the tenders, the applicability and innovation potential of the expected research results play a major role for the assessment of the proposals. Proposers are facing clear expectations to realise suitable activities and their respective results in the fields of innovation management, exploitation and communication. Especially for large collaborative projects with ambitioned project goals, it is crucial to outline these measures in a convincing manner in order to achieve a positive evaluation of the final proposal. We would therefore like to take this opportunity and highlight a new Eurice workshop series for proposers targeting the new calls. Registration is still possible for the upcoming workshop and networking sessions taking place in our Berlin office on October 26 and November 30. Please register online, participation is free of charge. We are looking forward to welcoming you to one of these events.