The Main Sections of Part A of a European Proposal

With a budget of €95.5 billion, Horizon Europe is the European Union’s (EU’s) primary funding programme for research and innovation. They concentrate on important pressing issues such as climate change, thereby contributing to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and boosting the EU’s competitiveness and growth. They also contribute to increasing the impact of research and innovation, as well as developing, supporting, and implementing European Union policies. They aim to accomplish all of these while also addressing other global issues.

Application Form in Horizon Europe:

Like any other major global program, Horizon Europe also requires an application form to be properly and timely filled for your research or innovation funding. The application form is comprised of three different parts: Part A, Part B and Part C. Once an applicant filled out and submitted the form, the authorities will perform a preliminary review of the application and soon after the long process review process for approval is carried out. While filling out this form can be tedious, it is imperative that the applicant or the coordinator go through it very carefully with a keen eye and ensure all questions are answered and every lines are filled out.

Main Sections of Part A of a European Proposal:

Part A consists of mandatory information fields, checklists, and declarations that must be completed immediately using the online submission mechanism.

Section 1 – General information

You should include the acronym, proposal full title, duration in months of the proposed project, free keywords related to your proposal content, and an English abstract of your proposal in this section. The abstract must have a maximum length of 2000 characters (including spaces, full stops and commas)

Section 2- Declarations

In this section, you must answer a series of questions and statements related to the content of the proposal, the obligations of the coordinator and the partners in regard to the project activities as well as the financial aspects.

Section 3 – Administrative data on proposing organisation(s)

The coordinator will encrypt the PIC code of his or her organisation, as well as the PIC codes of all other applicants. Following the encoding of the PIC code, a portion of the administrative data will be automatically filled in.

In Horizon Europe, you should complete new sections. These are:

1. Table listing the researchers who will be involved in the proposal. It will include their gender, phase of their research career, and whether or not the researcher is leading the proposal.
2. Table defining the role of the participating organisation in the proposal. There are a number of pre-defined fields and you should select those that apply to your organisation.
3. List of the 5 most relevant publications or achievements of the organisation.
4. List of the 5 most relevant previous projects where the entity has been involved.
5. Description of the infrastructure/equipment that the entity makes available for the project.

The section 4 of the previous funding programme Horizon 2020 has been deleted but in Horizon Europe, this section is completed in part A.

In this section, information regarding the gender equality plan must be completed. It is an eligibility criterion to participate in Horizon Europe that ask all entities to submit their gender equality plans. Please check our article on “The Gender Equality Plan in Horizon Europe” to get more information about this section.

Section 4 – Budget

You must fill up a budget overview table in this section. Please check our article on “What type of costs are eligible?” to get more information about this section.

Section 5 – Information about the action

This section should list the proposal’s target countries. It should also be stated, if applicable, which system will be pushed and which product, or products, will be utilised to illustrate it. It should be noted that you can choose from a variety of products.