Commission publishes report on SME participation in Horizon Europe

Recently, the European Commission has published a monitoring flash on the SME participation in the first three years of Horizon Europe. The report offers a comprehensive overview of SME participation in Horizon Europe, looking at whether the programme is on track with legal targets and expectations. It also looks at the country distribution of SME participants, at the structural characteristics of SMEs, and the role that SMEs play in collaborative research and innovation projects.

The main findings of the report are as follows:

• In the first three years of Horizon Europe, SMEs received €6.6 billion in EU contributions, over 20% of all programme funding. This is a large increase compared to the previous programme, Horizon 2020. Equity investments for SMEs through the EIC Fund (€1.26 billion) play a key role.
• While there are still many SMEs in Horizon Europe (7,474, 34% of all participants), their number is not increasing. A change in strategy for the Framework Programme –support fewer but more innovative SMEs with more capital for growth – is the main driver of this trend.
• More than half of Horizon Europe SMEs are new to EU R&I programmes (“newcomers”).
• Success rates of SME applications have strongly improved (19.9% today from 12% in Horizon 2020), also driven by a very strong increase in the quality of proposals throughout the programme.

The report can be downloaded here:

SME participation in the first three years of Horizon Europe