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Belgian participations in the EU Framework Programme

The European Framework Programmes for Research and Innovation (FPs) are the European Union's main instruments for implementing its research development and innovation policy. They fund research proposals ranging all the way from frontier science to market implementation of innovations.

Horizon 2020 (H2020)

  • Belgium in a European perspective: For H2020, the EU aggregate corresponds to the former EU-28, i.e. including the UK. We have excluded from the Belgian figures the COST association as well as the various EITs (as institutions), which are purely of transnational nature.
  • Belgium in details: Regional data also include date on Higher Education Institutions which fall within the competence of the linguistic Communities (e.g. data for the Brussels Region also include data from the ULB and from the VUB). We have excluded from the Belgian figures the COST association as well as the various EITs (as institutions), which are purely of transnational nature.

Horizon Europe (HE)

  • Belgium in a European perspective: For HE, the EU aggregate corresponds to the current EU-27, i.e. excluding the UK. We have excluded from the Belgian figures the COST association as well as the various EITs(as institutions), which are purely of transnational nature.
  • Belgium in details: Regional data also include date on Higher Education Institutions which fall within the competence of the linguistic Communities (e.g. data for the Brussels Region also include data from the ULB and from the VUB). We have excluded from the Belgian figures the COST association as well as the various EITs (as institutions), which are purely of transnational nature.

Some terminology

In the practice, most of the time, a group of applicants introduce a proposal in response to a call of the European Commission. If the proposal is retained (i.e. put on the main list), it becomes a project, and the applicants are then termed participants. This gives rise to a signed grant agreement (SGA). It may however be the case that some proposals are not put on the main list in a first sate but then eventually become projects in a later stage; so the statistics on main-list projects and SGAs do not match perfectly.

Based on these definitions, three success rates are defined:

  • Success rate in applications: nb. applications in retained proposals / nb. applications in eligible proposals.
    • The number of applications concerns applicants from a given country/region and type.
  • Success rate in EU funding: total funding requested in applications in retained proposal / total funding requested in applications in eligible proposal
    • The number of applications concerns applicants from a given country/region and type
  • Success rate in proposal: nb retained proposals with at least one applicant of the country/region and type / nb eligible proposals with at least one applicant of the country/region and type.

The FPs officially distinguish between 5 types of applicants/participants, defined as follows:

  • PRC: Private-for-profit companies
  • PUB: Public bodies, excluding research and education
  • REC: Nonprofit research organisations, excluding education
  • HES: Higher education establishments
  • OTH: Other

The "OTH" category include a large number of non-profit organizations. In specific the case of Belgium this means all PO boxes of international federations, confederations, etc. as well as some intergovernmental organizations, EEIGs etc. To take into account this "Brussels Effect" we tried to separate the OTH category into an OTH-INT (for international organizations) and OTH (for the remaining organizations) in the Belgian statistics.

Furthermore the FPs are broken down into large pillars, themselves broken down into clusters and topics. Each call and thus each application/participation belongs to one of these topics. The statistics presented here aggregate applications/participations by large pillar of the Programme.

The structure of H2020 is as follows: (Source: European Commission)

The structure of HE is: (Source: European Commission)