The BMR 2022 focuses on Horizon Europe’s new partnership landscape and establishes benchmarks for assessing progress in future reports. BMR 2022 is the first attempt to comprehensively monitor partnerships using a set of common indicators and to analyse their contribution to EU policy objectives and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (Chapter 2). It also provides a country-by-country snapshot of the performance of the 27 EU Member States, Iceland, and Norway (Chapter 3), as well as the performance of each European Partnership (Chapter 4).

Notes

• Two cross-cutting themes were selected for this edition: synergies, as European Partnerships are expected to take a more systematic approach for collaborating between themselves, as well as with other R&I initiatives, and ‘expected contribution to the EU priorities of the green and digital transitions and resilience’. Insights related to the selected themes are integrated in the report’s chapters.
• The first BMR is different from the following editions because data on the performance of European Partnerships is still very limited. Therefore, this report provides indicative observations based largely on data collected via the Common Indicators Survey, partnership and country fiches, and Horizon 2020’s data, while future reports will include Horizon Europe’s data.

For the 49 European Partnerships in the first Horizon Europe Strategic Plan, a total of EUR 55.3 billion has been committed, of which EUR 23.9 billion from Horizon Europe and EUR 31.4 billion from the partners other than the Union.

Member States and Associated Countries have committed EUR 9 billion to the first public partnerships launched under Horizon Europe. Considering that the initial national contributions earmarked by Member States and Associated Countries for partnership calls during Horizon 2020 was around EUR 3 billion, this is a remarkable achievement. It is only comparable to the estimated actual investment made in calls since 2004, including the EU’s contribution, which reaches some EUR 9 billion (read more).

Industry has committed EUR 22.4 billion to the launched European Partnerships. This exceeds by EUR 4.9 billion the requirement to match the EU’s contribution for the co-programmed partnerships and joint undertakings.

Note: resources can contribute to several objectives at the same time, resulting in a total exceeding 100%.

The BMR 2022 shows the multidisciplinary way in which these priorities are being addressed in European Partnerships and therefore the clear potential for synergies and cooperation between partnerships across clusters. The figures in this section show the contribution of European Partnerships to Green deal, digital transition and health-related resilience.

In the partnership fiches (Chapter 4 of the report) read more about the past success stories or the future intentions of partnerships to establish synergies with European, national and regional initiatives.

European Partnerships address in particular the following SDGs:

Member States recognise the value of partnerships by showing increased interest and commitments in the Horizon Europe partnerships.

Acknowledging the value of Horizon Europe partnerships as more strategic policy instruments marks a difference from the way in which the first partnerships were perceived during Framework Programme 6 and Framework Programme 7, when they were merely considered as an additional funding source.

Under Horizon 2020, the partnerships have led to a variety of impacts at national level going beyond those created by the transnational collaboration in R&I. These include structural impacts improving the national R&I governance system, as well as dedicated funding structures and tools enriching the national portfolios. Some partnerships have also been instrumental in improving the capacity of certain countries in relation to infrastructures. This is particularly important for the less-advanced countries.

European Partnerships demonstrate a strong awareness for improving openness, setting up dedicated measures for newcomers and an interest in reaching out to widening countries in Europe as shown in the graph below. Most partnerships have planned measures for involving various types of stakeholders and countries. Reoccurring planned measures for several partnerships were stakeholder fora, open events, open calls, and activities in new countries.

Partnerships are open for collaboration beyond the EU. When asked which newcomer non-EU countries partnerships target as partners, Norway and Israel were most often mentioned, alongside some African countries. Some partnerships also included Brazil, Canada, China, Chile, India, and the USA in their answers.

Horizon 2020 data shows that partnerships differ as regards the beneficiary types they attract. European Institute of Innovation and Technology Knowledge and Innovation Communities (EIT KICs) and public-public partnerships (P2Ps), like the other Horizon 2020 instruments, address the full spectrum (higher education institutes, private for-profit companies, research organisations and, to a limited extent, public bodies), whereas projects supported by joint undertakings (JUs) and contractual public-private partnerships (cPPPs) are dominated by private for-profit entities.

Horizon 2020 data shows also that not many countries take the leading role of coordinating a partnership, the lack of administrative resources being the main reason here. This role is distributed among the most active countries, i.e. France, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Spain.

European Partnerships intend to establish numerous collaboration links between themselves. The central position of partnerships such as EIT Climate-KIC and AI, Data and Robotics stand out with the largest number of planned coordinated and joint activities with other partnerships.