The Commission’s staff working document presents the first annual monitoring report on Horizon 2020, the European Union's Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2014-2020). With its dedicated budget of around EUR 75 billion over seven years, Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme. The implementation of Horizon 2020 is based on multiannual work programmes, which are prepared by the Commission in consultation with stakeholders.
This document focuses on the implementation of the work programme 2014-2015, which was adopted in December 2013. It helps to identify the most important issues related to performance as measured by the Key Performance Indicators, implementation aspects and participation trend. It covers 58 calls within the Horizon 2020 work programme and six calls from the work programmes of the public-private partnerships (Joint Undertakings). 2014 has also been a year of transition from FP7 to Horizon 2020 and the report presents achievements of some of the key improvements established by Horizon 2020, notably in terms of simplification.
The report also includes the implementation activities of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) as well as of the Euratom Research and Training Programme.
Main findings:
Implementation aspects: the report shows that the time to grant has been reduced compared to FP7, but also shows that further effort is needed in order to ensure data quality and gathering processes.
Special attention has been paid to the following participation trends:
Oversubscription: Horizon 2020 is a very attractive programme, as demonstrated by the high number of eligible proposals (33 792) and applications (122 713). The success rate of Horizon 2020 is 13.39%, compared to the FP7 rate of 19% on average over the seven years.
EU-28 participation rates: 86.7% of the total number of eligible applications was submitted from the EU- 28. Almost 75% of the total financial contribution resulting from calls for proposals went to 6 EU-15 countries (Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy).
Public-Private and Public-Public Partnerships: while it has not been possible to report on the actual investments from industry partners and other sources in PPPs, the investment from participating states in Article 185 initiatives is estimated in EUR 178.1 million, of which the Union contribution is EUR 58.5 million. This corresponds to a leverage effect of 2:1.
Crosscutting issues: for Horizon 2020 calls closed in 2014, the EU financial contribution targets were not achieved, even if programmable actions were very close to the climate target (32% instead of 35%) and relatively close for sustainable development (50% instead of 60%). The Commission is working on measures to improve these figures.
Horizon 2020 has fostered Open Innovation: Private-for-Profit entities represent more than 60% of the applicants in retained proposals. Within LEIT and Societal Challenges cumulated budget, the share of EU financial contribution going to private entities is 43.66%. Horizon 2020 has promoted Open Science with frontier research under the European Research Council (ERC), amounting to a financial contribution of EUR 1 734 million, EUR 220 million for Future and Emerging Technologies, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions have received funding for EUR 864 million and Research Infrastructures projects for EUR 391 million.
Overall, 6% of the budget went to social science and humanities partners.
The Commission states that the next edition of the annual monitoring report will keep analysing these trends, focussing in particular on changes occurred compared to previous Horizon 2020 implementation years.