A number of non-EU countries can fully participate in Horizon Europe projects. These countries have signed an international agreement with the EU to do so and pay for being allowed to participate as full members of Horizon Europe.
The list of these countries is the following:
- Albania
- Armenia
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Faroe Islands
- Georgia
- Iceland
- Israel
- Moldova
- Montenegro
- North Macedonia
- Norway
- Serbia
- Switzerland
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- Ukraine
As an EU coordinator of a Horizon Europe proposal, you can invite any academic or non-academic organisation from any of these countries to participate in your project. As an organisation in one of these countries, you can submit a proposal as a coordinator.
An exception is to be noted: as the EU considers as illegal the Russian annexation of Crimea, organisations from Crimea are not entitled to Horizon Europe funding.
More than just listing them, let us share a few interesting statistics about these countries in the previous Horizon 2020 programme:
All are net recipients of Horizon 2020 funding: from 2.83 million Euros for Armenia, to an impressive 1.11 billion for Norway and 1.62 billion for Switzerland.
All have very good application success rates: the lowest is 8.98% for Ukraine, and it goes up to 25.51% for the Faroe Islands. Ok, the Faroe Islands are a small country, so consider the 17.78% for Switzerland or 13.41 for Israel in comparison with the average success rate of Horizon 2020 which is at 11.94%.
Despite having a population of only 49,290 people, the Faroe Islands had 15 SMEs funded under Horizon 2020.
Switzerland, with 397 ERC grants, is followed by Israel with 350. It makes 46 ERC grants per million inhabitants in Switzerland and 38 for Israel, which is much more than Germany (11) and France (9).
The participation of the associated countries in your proposals can really enrich them with skills, talents and resources that sometimes are not to be found in the EU. The excellent statistics reveal that a lot of applicants have understood it!
