Horizon 2020

EMDESK – all you need to manage your Horizon 2020 project.

Horizon 2020 – the largest EU Research Framework Programme

Horizon 2020 (H2020) is the multiannual EU funding programme aimed to support and encourage research projects during the period from 2014 to 2020. It is the largest Research and Innovation Framework Programme in the history of the EU with a budget of almost €80 billion.

H2020 is a single programme that covers three initiatives – the 7th Research Framework Programme (FF7), the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP), the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).

Horizon 2020 – Unique European Programme

Goals and ambitions of H2020

H2020 supports financially the Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative focused on ensuring Europe’s global competitiveness. The primary goal of H2020 is to strengthen the EU’s position as a world leader in science, innovation, and technology, and consequently help Europe become more attractive for research and innovation investment.

As European Commission claims H2020 is set out to:

  • secure excellent Europe’s contribution to world science;
  • help European SMEs to become large companies with world leadership;
  • facilitate the collaboration of the public and private sectors in finding solutions to major challenges in Europe.

Three key priorities of H2020

Research and innovation play an important role in driving economy and investing in the future. By coupling research and innovation, H2020 is promoting long term and comprehensive economic performance. The programme highlights three central work areas that create fine framework conditions for the European development:

  • Excellent science – supporting the best scientists in frontier research, providing them with the newest technologies and best infrastructure.
  • Industrial leadership – enabling new industrial technologies which drive innovations, strengthening the role of innovative SMEs.
  • Societal challenges – creating better societal and ecological environment by gathering knowledge and resources from various fields.

Work programmes of H2020

Apart from the primary programmes aimed to support excellent science and industrial leadership in Europe, and those coping with the EU challenges, H2020 addresses some other significant initiatives:

  • Science with and for society, the initiative is intended to establish efficient connection between science and society, raise interest in science and innovation, and speed up further research and innovation activities by bringing together scientific excellence and social awareness.
  • Spreading excellence and widening participation, the initiative aims to bridge the innovation gap between EU states by mentoring and networking with so-called Widening EU countries, thus to ensure that the benefits of an innovative economy are widespread throughout the EU.

Statistics

Horizon 2020 is a highly successful programme going straightforward to achieving its main goals: supporting excellent science, promoting industrial leadership, and providing solutions to the societal challenges.

Here is a short overview of the programme’s main achievements after the first three years of its implementation (2014 – 2016).

Research and innovation in Europe continues to be on point and relevant:

  • In total, 115,235 eligible proposals were submitted under Horizon 2020, with a total EU financial contribution of €182.4 billion.
  • The overall success rate of eligible full proposals, half of which were evaluated as high quality by independent experts, is 12.6%.
  • A total of 13,903 grant agreements were signed with the EU contribution of €24.8 billion.

Continuing efforts to simplify the funding process in Horizon 2020 are paying of:

  • Almost 91% of grant agreements were signed within the set timeframe of eight months.
  • It is now 192.5 days from a proposal being submitted to the grant being awarded, compared to 303 days in FP7 (Seventh Research Framework Programme), the previous EU funding programme.

Abound 54% of applicants in Horizon 2020 are newcomers, which hadn’t participated in FP7.

The share of funding provided to SMEs exceeded the target of 20%.

One central tool – EMDESK for successful collaboration in H2020

At EMDESK we closely follow the developments of EU funding programmes and constantly adapt our platform to keep offering the best possible support to European research consortia.

Trusted by 28.000+ users in 4.000+ projects worldwide

Steinbeis Europa Zentrum Logo

Eduardo Herrmann

Project Manager at Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum, Germany

EMDESK is very useful and facilitates the management of research projects. The software differentiates itself from others with its user-friendly interface and the wide range of functions. Most of all, the team actively listens and implements recommendations from its users. EMDESK offers a good value for the money spent. We are extending the use of EMDESK as it integrates well into our workflow and helps to manage projects efficiently.

Barcelona Supercomputing Center

Sergi Madonar Soria

Senior Research Project Manager at Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Spain

EMDESK software has proven very useful for the follow-up of our projects. The support team is very responsive and helpful.

Polytechnic Institute of Setubal

Luis Coelho

Assistant Professor at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Setúbal School of Technology of Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal, Portugal

The organization and sharing of documents, the scheduling of events, the help in the preparation of reports and other features makes EMDESK a strong support for the development of a project of this dimension and responsibility. In line with my experience, I suggest using EMDESK to everyone who will coordinate projects.

Fraunhofer Gesellschaft

Maximilian Steiert

Headquarter of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Germany

After the evaluation by the project management team of the Fraunhofer EU-Network and the Fraunhofer SIT (Institute for Secure Information technology) EMDESK clearly convinced us because of its usability. It also fulfills the strict data-protection standards of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft.

Circe Logo

José Luis Vadillo López

Fundación CIRCE, Spain

EMDESK provides useful solutions and helps us a lot with project management! At CIRCE we were looking for a good tool to manage our projects. We started using EMDESK with one project and quickly also switched running all projects over to the tool as it gives us accuracy and an integral control over the projects. In addition we are very happy with the technical and commercial support we receive. We strongly recommend the tool!

Human Brain Project Logo

Eric Matrou

Finance Officer and Risk and Performance Manager, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

We thoroughly enjoy working with EMDESK. As a large project with thousands of team members, hundreds of partners and lots of deadlines, we have a tight schedule and special requirements. We would recommend EMDESK to anyone looking for a comprehensive collaboration solution.

University of Leicester

Dr Alison Taysum

University of Leicester, the UK

EMDESK takes innovative technology and synthesises it with legal and traditional financial management requirements to offer a state of the art management solution system that enables teams to manage scheduling of activities, and allocation of resources mapped to forecast budgets and actual spends. I highly recommend a free trial of EMDESK to see exactly what excellent value for money you will be getting with this platform. My experience of the platform surpassed my expectations.

Selex ES

Paolo Di Michele

Project Manager at SELEX ES SpA, Italy

The use of EMDESK has made the task of managing much more rewarding. You can have full control over every aspect of the program with minimal daily effort. It's really an invaluable tool for managing multiple projects, especially large ones.

University of Leicester

Dr Alison Taysum

University of Leicester, the UK

EMDESK provides a platform that empowers large teams and their stakeholders/clients to interface on many different levels from instruction and discussions to accounting, reporting and auditing systems. EMDESK fully integrates all aspects of a large and complex project offering users full and transparent accountability and assurance the system can provide information required for full audits.

Human Brain Project Logo

Emilija Stoilova

Administrative Coordinator at HBP Project Coordination Office (PCO), Switzerland

We have an excellent experience with EMDESK. All projects, regardless of their size, small teams or large consortia with 143 partners as in the HBP project, will certainly benefit from it. EMDESK has proven to be a reliable and stable tool indispensable for the management of various project-related processes.

RWTH Aachen University 2

Eva Haas

EU Project Manager at RWTH Aachen University, Germany

The Technical Support at EMDESK is a great asset to my daily work. The support representatives provide quick and helpful answers. They carefully read what I write in emails, and provide comprehensive answers and clear guidelines on how to proceed.

Copernicus

Laura Cherdel

MyOcean Project Administrator, France

EMDESK is an excellent tool that the team members and partners are able to use easily and quickly. We are happy with the choice we made. I greatly appreciate the fact that project managers at every level are able to report and update directly in EMDESK and I don't have to exchange back and forth with Word.

University of Brighton

Prof. Jacqueline O'Reilly

University of Brighton, the UK

We have been really impressed with the software in helping make monitoring and reporting so much easier. The support services in setting up the system and answering questions were always excellent, concise and efficient. I recommend this software to anyone who is planning a project proposal or managing projects as it takes away a lot of the pain of pea counting and formatting proposal and reporting documentation.

Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology Jena

Gabriele Hamm

Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology Jena, Germany

It is a great pleasure to work with EMDESK. The software is a very convincing and facilitating project management tool.

Logo L Up

Peggy Favier

Project Manager at L-up

We had heard many things about the power and versatility of EMDESK, so it was an easy choice to use them as a project management tool. This switch increased our ability to handle larger projects and coordinate information among team members. We were also able to cut the time spent on our procedures by 15 percent. EMDESK is one tool that we would definitely recommend to every project manager.

Logo Warrant Hub

Isella Vicini

Director, European Funding Division at Warrant Hub SpA

The main results and improvements we achieved, by using EMDESK project management tool, is a greatly reduced workload that enabled gathering inputs by e-mail and collating documents for reporting and monitoring of resources.

Graphene Flagship

Katarina Boustedt

Project Coordinator at Graphene Flagship

Professionally organized, the EMDESK Team executed the migration from the standard edition to our servers in less than two weeks and provided us with a seamless and uncomplicated service; including consultation with our local server team. EMDESK is a highly reliable partner that provides us with a tool that helps us to manage and monitor all our project activities. Combining a personal service with flexibility and solution-oriented thinking, we recently extended our contract with EMDESK for the next project phase.

Human Brain Project Logo

Dr. Christian Fauteux

Chief Administrative Officer, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

We selected EMDESK to plan our project proposal after facing problems with other tools. We switched to EMDESK less than 3 months before submission and were very happy that the collaboration went so smoothly. EMDESK met our individual requirements quickly and professionally. With budget and administrative data to be consolidated for more than 80 partners, this was quite an achievement. I believe that such a big project could not have been prepared without its help. Today we use EMDESK as our project management tool.

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Horizon Europe – the new EU Research Framework Programme

Horizon Europe is the new EU funding programme that got off the ground in 2021 and will run till 2027. With a budget of €95.5 billion, it is the largest European collaborative multinational research & innovation investment ever.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are the costs for EMDESK eligible for reimbursement under Horizon Europe?

Yes, EMDESK is reimbursable in Horizon Europe (as Other Direct Costs or overhead fees).

What Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020 templates are available on EMDESK?

EMDESK offers several ready-to-use templates that populate new workspaces with predefined content – all easily customized to your needs and the way your teams work. When you create a new workspace, choose from a variety of templates – generic or specialized, e.g. Horizon Europe or H2020.

Can I use EMDESK for Horizon Europe projects?

Yes, EMDESK is designed to help you plan and execute a Horizon Europe project. During project creation just choose the right Horizon Europe template.

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