\
&
Contact us
\
&
Contact us
Association to Horizon Europe is the closest form of international cooperation in Horizon Europe. Entities of Associated Countries can participate in the Horizon Europe calls under the same conditions as entities from the EU Member States and are therefore eligible for funding, unless specific limitations or conditions are laid down in the work programme and/or call topic text.
Not only EU neighbouring countries can apply for association, any country in the world with a strong research and innovation capacity that share common values with Europe can apply for association to Horizon Europe.
There are 4 categories of countries eligible for association with Horizon Europe:
Close to the start of the Association, transitional measures can be set in place, through which entities of these countries can already be included as beneficiaries in call topics. Details are mentioned in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.
When involving stakeholders from recently associated countries (e.g. Switzerland and South Korea) in a proposal, it has been reported that a warning may appear in the Funding & Tenders Portal submission system though the eligibility conditions are met: “The call requires at least three participants from three different EU Member States or associated countries”. The European Commission confirmed that this warning is linked to the current technical configuration of the submission system and does not reflect the respective associated country status. You can always revise the Country eligibility tool on our website to revise the status of countries. If indeed the country is associated, then the warning can be ignored, provided that the final consortium complies with the minimum eligibility conditions at submission stage.
All details regarding country eligibility is compiled in the infosheet “International cooperation".
The RUSTICA project obtained funding under Horizon 2020, more in particular under the topic ‘Closing nutrient cycles’. RUSTICA focuses on demonstration and implementation of circular bio-based nutrient valorisation chains, focusing on waste from the fruit and vegetable agro-food system. The project kicked off in 2021 and will run until 2024. It will use a strong multi-actor approach to co-create both socio-economic and technological knowledge in four case study regions in Europe and one in Colombia. The Flanders-based company DRANCO is one of the project partners and acts as technical project manager for the entire project. DRANCO participates in the project to develop its own technologies, to network and to help make the transition to a more circular based economy.
