A Guide to Funding
A guide to funding, explaining the eight steps to take to make an application for research funding from the European Commission.
Applying for funding has been simplified. If you’re interested in applying for funding, there are now eight easy steps you can follow:
Step 1: Identify relevant Calls for Proposals
Your first task is to identify, on the Participant Portal
, a Call that is relevant to your organisation or to an idea you may have for a research project. Find out when the Call will be published and when submissions will close. For your convenience, we are displaying the latest calls on transport on our homepage.
Step 2: Obtain Call-specific documentation and forms
The EC publishes a complete information package, including a comprehensive ‘Guide for Applicants’ that offers advice for pre¬paring and submitting proposals. This is found under each Call at http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/page/calls
Step 3: Establish a consortium
The scope of EU research funding is truly pan-European and your proposal should reflect that in its consortium. For this reason, the proposal needs to have partners forming a multinational consortium capable of undertaking the work contained in the project. Each project submitted for consideration needs to be jointly submitted by the consortium partners. Partners can easily be identified using established scientific and business networks or through the Partners Service on CORDIS.
Step 4: Prepare your research proposal and submit it to the EC by the Call deadline
Proposers must use the Electronic Proposal Submission Service (EPSS), which is a secure online workspace for consortium members to prepare and submit their joint proposal. Calls have a strict deadline for submissions which must be respected.
Step 5: Evaluation
Following a Call, all submitted proposals are evaluated by a panel of independent experts in the relevant fields.
Step 6: Contract negotiations and contract agreement
For successful proposals, the EC enters into financial and technical negotiations with your consortium on the project details. Finally, grant agreement is drawn up between each participant and the EC. This lays out the rights and obligations of the beneficiaries and the EC, including the EU’s financial contribution to research costs.