Portugal's participation in the Horizon 2020 program with unprecedented results

Almost two years into Horizon 2020 – the EU Framework Program for Research & Innovation, scientists, research units, and companies in Portugal have secured €204 million in funding, which corresponds to 1.8% of the total funding available under Call. These results represent a significant improvement compared to the 1.15% of funds raised in the previous framework program, FP7, and suggest that the national R&D community is on track to achieve the 1.5% target set for the overall period 2014-2020.

In 2014, Portugal managed to attract a total of around €146 million of the approximately €8.5 billion allocated by Horizon 2020 (a success rate of 1.75%). Having contributed around €120 million in 2014, Portugal ceased to be a net contributor to this type of funding and, for the first time in the history of competitive European funding for science, managed to obtain more funding than the country invested in the program.

This positive trend continued in 2015: with around one-third of Calls , results to date indicate that the country has already secured 2% of the total available budget—again well above the 1.5% target for the seven-year period of Horizon 2020.

Among the 413 proposals involving Portugal that have been approved, 97 have been coordinated by Portuguese entities, including 11 from the Twinning program. Twinning enables partnerships to be established between entities from countries considered to have low scientific performance and world-leading European institutions, encouraging the strengthening of scientific capacity and the internationalization of institutions in eligible countries.

The 11 Portuguese Twinning proposals selected for funding (among 65 funded at European level) represent around €11.2 million, of which €6.17 million is earmarked for national institutions and the remainder for international partners who will collaborate with them. The national institutions are the Institute of Molecular Medicine of the University of Lisbon (3 contracts), the 3B's Institute of the University of Minho (2 contracts), INESC-Porto, the Higher Institute of Agronomy of the University of Lisbon, UNINOVA, the University of Coimbra, the University of Lisbon, and CIIMAR – Interdisciplinary Center for Marine and Environmental Research.

The overall results of Portuguese participation in H2020 can be found here (updated periodically).