What does financial support look like in specific parts of Horizon Europe in the period 2021-2023? Is the structure of the Czech participation similar to the research and innovation developed countries of the EU?

According to the European Innovation Scoreboard 2023 (EIS 2023), CZECHIA is a Moderate Innovator with performance at 94.7% of the EU average. Performance is above the average of the Moderate Innovators. Performance is increasing at a rate higher than that of the EU (8.5%-points). The country’s performance gap to the EU is becoming smaller. How are these facts reflected in the Czech Republic's participation in the Horizon Europe programme so far? Does the structure of the Czech Republic's participation in this FP resemble that of the developed EU countries? And how are the Czech coordinators doing?

The participation of individual countries or groups of countries in Horizon Europe (hereafter "HE") and in previous Framework Programmes (hereafter "FPs") can be measured in many ways.  One of them may be to analyse the distribution of the financial support claimed in specific parts of the HE programme. In our case, a specific part of the HE programme can be considered as a part of the programme whose content, implementation modalities, rules for participation, nature of the projects funded, etc. differ significantly from other parts of the FP. For this analysis, the available data in the eCORDA database made it possible to distinguish
9 specific areas of the HE programme. These are the three priorities of the first pillar of the HE programme - European Research Council (ERC) grants, research mobility grants - MSCA, projects for the support and development of research infrastructures - INFRA, projects implemented in the second pillar of the HE programme under the umbrella of European missions, projects of the second pillar of the HE programme implemented through European partnerships implemented in this pillar and projects funded by other calls of the second pillar of the HE programme. Other specific areas of the HE programme are the European Innovation Council - EIC grants with the main instruments EIC Pathfinder, EIC Transition and EIC Accelerator, and the priority for reducing persistent gaps in research and innovation performance through sharing knowledge and expertise across the EU - Widening participation and spreading excellence (SEWP). The remaining project types, e.g. projects funded under the priority Reform and Improvement of the European Research and Innovation System (in the H2020 Science with and for Society or SwafS programme), projects to support EIC KICs or projects to improve the EIE innovation environment, are included in the "Others" section.

The distribution of financial support from the HE programme budget has been assessed at the level of individual European countries (EU countries and some selected widening countries) and groups of countries in the nine specific areas of this FP. For the distribution of countries into groups, a combination of the classification of a given country according to its overall innovation performance published in the EIS 2023 and the classification (or not) of a given country as a so-called widening country according to the HE programme rules was chosen. This classification of countries appears to be more appropriate for this analysis in the context of their level of research and innovation than the more usual political classification of European countries into OMS (EU-14) and NMS (EU-13) or so-called third countries. 

Please, find the whole article with graphics on the web Horizon Europe.