The Director General of DG RTD of the European Commission has revealed that they received 16,000 applications in the first round of calls for Horizon 2020.
These calls had a budget of €15 billion. Funding requested in 9 times that much. The first-round success rate will be 11%. The most heavily-subscribed calls concerned health, food, ICT and cyber-security.
The Commission will be advising National Contact Points to take a greater role in screening ideas, to ensure that only the strongest proceed to proposal phase.
On a positive note, the goal of “bringing industry back in the game” has been successful. 44% of all applicants were from industry and of these half were SMEs.
Source Science Business portal.
