Horizon Europe: Building a Winning Consortium

In the collaborative calls of Horizon Europe — the Cluster and Pillar II projects — the winner is not the single applicant with the best idea, but the consortium that can combine complementary competences around a shared goal. The proposal is assessed as a system: if one partner is weak or a role is redundant, the whole project suffers. Building a good consortium is strategic work that begins months before the writing starts.

What “consortium” means in Horizon Europe

Most topics in the collaborative calls require a partnership that meets minimum composition requirements: as a rule, at least three independent entities established in three different Member States or Associated Countries. But the legal minimum is only the starting point: competitive consortia often count eight to fifteen partners, each chosen because they bring something necessary to the value chain.

For Swiss companies, the premise about Switzerland’s association status with Horizon Europe applies — a status that has gone through different phases: the current position, and any substitute national funding arrangements, should be checked before committing to a proposal.

The roles within a consortium

A balanced consortium distributes roles clearly:

Coordinator: leads the project, manages relations with the Commission, and handles reporting and coordination. A demanding role, suited to those with managerial experience who are reliable.
Research partners: universities and institutions that bring scientific rigour and the state of the art.
Industrial partners: companies that bring the real use case, validation and the market perspective.
End users and ecosystem players: bodies, associations and clusters that ensure impact and dissemination of results.

Every partner must have a substantial role. Evaluators immediately spot the passenger, the partner brought in to satisfy a requirement without genuinely contributing.

The evaluation criteria

Proposals are judged on three axes, each with a threshold to clear:

Excellence: quality and ambition of the objectives, novelty compared to the state of the art, methodological soundness.
Impact: contribution to the objectives of the call, expected results, exploitation and dissemination strategy.
Implementation: quality of the work plan, work packages, budget and — the crucial point — the adequacy and complementarity of the consortium.

A lot is at stake on this last axis: the structure of the partnership is explicitly assessed. A well-calibrated consortium strengthens all three axes.

The work plan and the budget

The project is organised into work packages linked by logical dependencies, with verifiable deliverables and milestones. Each partner has assigned tasks and budget. Some principles:

distribute person-months in proportion to each partner’s real role;
avoid overlaps between work packages and redundant roles;
build a budget consistent with the activities, without inflation or underestimation;
provide for a work package dedicated to management and one to dissemination and exploitation.

The typical funding model for research and innovation projects provides for reimbursement as a percentage of eligible costs, with specific rules on direct and indirect costs that must be understood before preparing the budget.

Mistakes that sink a proposal

Building the consortium at the last minute, gathering whoever is available instead of who is needed.
Including partners without a clear role in the work plan.
Neglecting the Impact axis: many proposals that are solid on excellence fail on impact.
Underestimating management: a weak coordinator undermines even an excellent idea.
Ignoring the eligibility and minimum composition rules of the specific call.

Starting in good time

A good consortium grows out of relationships built before the call: brokerage events, research networks, industrial contacts. Being the first to identify a relevant topic and to assemble the right partners gives an enormous advantage over those who move in the final weeks.

How we help you

We help companies and research centres assess the relevance of a Horizon Europe topic, define their role within the consortium and build the case — objectives, impact, work packages and budget — in line with the evaluation criteria. We also check eligibility and funding options for Swiss entities. Let’s talk about your project.