Application part B – What to consider when preparing a Pillar II application.

Gender equality and inclusiveness are research activities throughout the Horizon Europe program aimed at reducing, and eventually eliminating, gender and socio-economic inequality. The commission addresses gender equality at the following levels:

• A Gender Equality Plan (GEP) is an eligibility criterion for certain partners, such as legal entities from EU countries and non-EU countries associated to Horizon Europe that are public bodies, research organizations or higher education entities, including private research organizations. Those entities are required to have a GEP.
   
• Integration of Gender Dimensions in your research project is a requirement and integrated into the excellence evaluation criteria. If it is not stated otherwise in the call text, you need to describe how you have included sex and gender analysis as well as social and cultural aspects in your project. This is usually done in the method section. You need to justify if it is not relevant for your project. 
   
• Increasing Gender Balance is an objective throughout the whole Horizon program. Practically you would want to aim as close to a 50:50 balance of women and men as possible within your research team, consortium, committees, and boards. Gender Balance is the third ranking criterion and used when proposals score tie in rank. 

Links:

• Horizon Europe guidance on gender equality plans
• KIs gender equality plan
• The commissions gender equality strategy 
• How to integrate sex and gender into your research (proposal).
• Gender dimensions and Gender balance from an EC perspective

Social Sciences and the Humanities (SSH) have already been an important cross-cutting issue under Horizon 2020 and most calls under Horizon Europe require the inclusion of SSH in the projects. SSH have a significant role in the consortium helping to contribute to the improvement and assessment of complex societal issues. SSH expertise that could be relevant for your project includes social and behavioral sciences, education science, journalism and information, business and administration, or law and humanities. Always refer to the call text!

Links:

•  Learn why the EU supports SSH research. 

Ethics and integrity are main pillars in research and a priority within the Horizon Europe Program. All proposals that are considered for funding are systematically screened to identify activities that might have complex or serious ethical issues. An “ethics self-assessment” is integrated in Part A of the proposal. Based on the outcome of the ethics self-assessment and ethics screening, you may be asked, during Grant Agreement preparation, to include additional action tasks or ethics checks and reviews. 

Links:

• A guide for how to complete your ethics self-assessment during proposal development. 
• Collected information about ethic, legal, and compliance related questions on KIs website under Ethics at KI and Legal issues, Compliance & Ethics within research. 

Open science practices and sharing knowledge, data, and tools are a policy priority for the Horizon Europe Program and at the application stage you need to describe how you will implement open science in your project. Although the European Commission understands limitations for researchers and their partners, Open Science in your project needs to follow the principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”. Open Science policies include: Open access to publications, Open access to research data, and the FAIR-principles for data.  

Links:

• FAIR-principles for data
• Open Science in Horizon Europe
• KIB - Open Access Articles

A dedicated Dissemination and Exploitation (D&E) plan is required for proposals under Horizon Europe pillar II to maximize the impact of the project. Dissemination describes how you make the research results available to the relevant audience which could include the scientific community, policymakers, and civil society. Exploitation describes how your results could be used to develop new products, services, and policies. The dissemination and exploitation plan includes planned activities and target groups during the project life cycle and beyond. A first draft needs to be provided at a proposal stage. Six months into the project (after signature of the Grant Agreement), a detailed plan for dissemination and exploitation including communication activities needs to be provided and continuously updated throughout the project. 

The European Commission itself facilitates dissemination and exploitation of project results and activities, for example through: 

• The Horizon Dashboard, an interactive knowledge platform with statistics and data on EU research and innovation
• The Horizon Result platform
• The Horizon Result Booster
• R&I Success Stories
• CORDIS providing public information on EU funded research projects

Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) are a set of technologies that are considered crucial for the development of new products and services in Europe. KETs include advanced materials and nanotechnology, photonics and micro- and nano-electronics, life science technologies, advanced manufacturing and processing, artificial intelligence and digital security and connectivity. If you develop and/or use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in your project, you need to “demonstrate their technical and/or socially robustness” and demonstrate their reliability and function (Example of a RIA template).

Links:

• Key Enabling Technologies

Social Innovation are innovations that try to answer and/or find solutions for so far unmet social and environmental problems and needs, build relationships, and aim at forming new collaborations. Social innovation is a requirement across all work programs, unless specified in the call text, and can enhance the impact and uptake of research innovation projects by involving users and stakeholders in the design, development, and implementation of solutions. 

EU Taxonomy is a classification system that defines criteria for economic activities that are considered as environmentally sustainable by contributing to the  European Green Deal.