The future partnership landscape of Horizon Europe begins to take shape as the European Commission publishes roadmaps for proposed institutional partnerships.
The European Commission (EC) has published Inception Impact Assessments on intended institutionalised partnerships (Art. 185 and 187 TFEU initiatives) to inform stakeholders about plans for such partnerships under Horizon Europe. The so-called “Roadmap” documents for each candidate partnership are open for public feedback until 27 August. In the next steps of the consultation process, the EC will consider the received feedback for further development and fine-tuning of the initiatives. The EC will then summarise the input received in a synopsis report explaining how it will be taken on board and, if applicable, why certain suggestions cannot be taken up.
Impact assessments are being prepared to inform the EC’s decision on whether to propose the establishment of dedicated institutionalised European Partnerships to address specific challenges. If this decision is positive, the relevant impact assessments are likely to be made available in the first quarter of 2020. The roadmaps for each of the 13 proposed institutional partnerships can be found on the EC website. Each of the proposed partnerships is a successor to one or more partnerships under Horizon 2020, or related to parts of them:
- European Partnership for transforming Europe’s rail system (successor to Shift-to-rail Art.187 partnership)
- European Partnership for safe and automated road transport (related to 5G, Big Data, ECSEL, S2R, SESAR, batteries, 2ZERO)
- European Partnership for integrated air travel traffic management (successor to SESAR Art.187 partnership)
- EU-Africa Global Health Partnership (successor to EDCTP2 Art.185 partnership)
- European Partnership for innovative health (successor to IMI2 Art.187 partnership)
- European Partnership on metrology (successor to EMPIR Art.185 partnership)
- European Partnership for Clean Aviation (successor to Clean Sky 2, Art.187 partnership)
- European Partnership for circular bio-based Europe (successor to BBI JU, Art.187 partnership)
- European Partnership for clean hydrogen (successor to Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Art.187 partnership)
- European Partnership for innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (successor to Eurostars-2 Art.185 partnership)
- Partnership for key digital technologies (successor to ECSEL Art.187 partnership and part of Photonics cPPP)
- European Partnership for smart networks and services (successor to cPPP 5G)
- Partnership on high performance computing (successor to EuroHPC Art.187 partnership)
The roadmap documents lay out the justification for why a specific challenge is best addressed through an institutional partnership rather than another framework. This evaluation process is part of implementing a simpler, more strategic, and coordinated approach to the setting-up of European Partnerships under Horizon Europe. It aims to reduce the administrative burden for applicants and beneficiaries. In addition, it lays down requirements (e.g. related to central management of financial contributions, access to data, and links with the monitoring and evaluation framework of Horizon Europe etc.) that support further simplification, harmonisation and more effective implementation.
A full impact assessment is required for all partnerships considered for institutionalised status based on Articles 185 and 187 TFEU. In this context, an external study will provide coordinated input for the preparation of impact assessments, which could lead to and would accompany the proposals for institutionalised partnerships. The study will be based on desk research, Commission and stakeholder consultation. According to the legislative proposal for Horizon Europe, “European Partnerships shall be established for addressing European or global challenges only in cases where they will more effectively achieve objectives of Horizon Europe than the Union alone and when compared to other forms of support of the Framework programme”. It remains to be seen how many of the candidate partnerships meet that standard.