Information about EU framework programme, Horizon Europe

The excellence pillar is a bottom-up instrument consisting mainly of individual grants. Calls will be fully bottom-up.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) now have new, more descriptive names:

• Doctoral Training Networks (10 young researchers enrolled in PhD programmes; must involve different countries)
• Postdoctoral Fellowships (up to 8 years after the PhD, time deduction for work outside academia or EU)
• Staff Exchanges (funding for research and networking across countries and sectors, includes now even within-academia exchange)
• Cofund (cofunds doctoral or postdoc programmes)
• MSCA and Citizens (supports dialogue, i.e. European Researchers’ Night)

ERC – European Research Council funds excellent research projects for individual researchers at three career stages: starting grants (2-7 years after PhD), consolidating grants (7-12 years after PhD) and advanced grants, as well as ERC-synergy projects (2-4 researchers) and proof of concept grants.

Research infrastructure important for EU can be financed here.

The majority of the budget (56%) is allocated to Pillar II to finance collaborative research projects both in research and innovation. Most projects will involve partners from different sectors, i.e. academia, public sector, companies and other end users. In general, at least three partners from three member states should collaborate.

Calls will be sorted in six clusters:

1. Health
2. Culture, creativity and inclusive society
3. Civil security for society
4. Digital, industry and space
5. Climate, energy and mobility
6. Food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and environment

Furthermore, missions and partnership will be financed under Pillar 2.

Missions
Missions are new in Horizon Europe and aims to solve some of the greatest challenges facing our world like

• Adaptation to climate change, including societal transformation
• Cancer
• Healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters
• Climate-neutral and smart cities
• Soil health and food

Each mission will operate as a portfolio of actions – such as research projects, policy measures or even legislative initiatives - to achieve a measurable goal that could not be achieved through individual actions. Calls will be announced within Pillar 2 and other calls will be flagged as contributing to missions. The political backing of the mission concept is hoped to result in national efforts also being directed towards missions.

Partnership programmes
For Horizon Europe, 49 candidates for partnerships have been put forward and are currently evaluated and fully developed. Sweden has yet to declare which partnerships it wishes to join, and thereby co-fund. There are three types of partnerships (some examples in parentheses):

• co-programmed (AI-Data-Robotics, Build4People, …)
• co-funded (Transformation of health systems (with SME:s), Water4All, Rescuing Biodiversity, Safe & sustainable food systems, Personalized medicine, Pandemic preparedness, Clean Energy Transition, …)
• institutionalised (Key Digital Technologies, High Performance computing, Circular Bio-based Europe, …)

The third pillar contains the most news compared to the current programme. EIC is an attempt to create an equivalent of the ERC for innovators, where the focus is on radical breakthrough market-creating innovation. The EIC will consist of two parts: Pathfinder and Accelerator. While Accelerator will focus on scale-up and is mainly intended for SMEs, there are opportunities for researchers within the Pathfinder, which includes early development stages such as proof-of-concept. Pathfinder will provide financing via grants. Opportunities for university researchers within the Pathfinder are specifically mentioned in the legal text of Horizon Europe.

Within Pillar III also KIC (Knowledge and Innovation Communities) and EIT (European Institute of Innovation & Technology) are found. There are plans for a future Innovation Community (KIC) within the area of cultural and creative industries.