The European Commission has published the interim evaluation of the Horizon Europe Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. It assesses the programme's first results and provides a detailed analysis of its relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, EU added-value and coherence with other EU policies.

The interim evaluation report ('staff working document') can be found at the bottom of this page as well as the 'communication' of the Commission which summarises the findings of the evaluation, highlights the strengths and identifies areas for improvement.

The Commission concluded in the evaluation report, among others, that

• the programme contributes to the twin transition: climate contribution was 35% of funding by the end of 2023 - digital transformation 8,7%
• so far, SMEs received grants for a total of € 7,4 billion (17% of the total budget)
• the programme's internal coherence is hindered by a high number of instruments
• beneficiaries of lump sum grants are expected to reduce the time spent on reporting by between 96 and 128 person-days per grant over the project lifetime
• the pilot on blind evaluation confirmes that the blind evaluation of proposals is feasible
• for each euro the EU has invested in Horizon Europe, it has attracted additional R&I investments of about € 0.24
• valorisation of R&D outputs remains a challenge
• it is challenging to draw conclusion of the progress of the missions due to shortcomings of the monitoring framework

In the Communication the Commission states a.o. the following priorities of the coming work programmes/years:

• to reduce the complexity of the Work Programmes
• to improve the process of dissemination and uptake of outputs
• to establish a European centre of expertise on Research Security
• to decrease the gap in venture capital funding for technology-based start-ups in Europe
• to focus resources on substantially fewer topics and more open topics
• to revise several non-financial obligations to produce shorter proposals
• to fund at least 50% of the budget through lump sum funding by 2027
• to expand Pillar 3