EU projects – Technology Scouting – Business Innovation

Swiss Researchers to Request EU Funding

As the agreement on Switzerland’s participation in the Horizon 2020 Programme of the European Commission provides for Switzerland’s full association to Horizon 2020 from 1 January 2017, the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) has released the following recommendations regarding participation of researchers in Switzerland in H2020 projects:

  1. To request EU contribution: It is important that for all proposal submissions,  Individual Grants (ERC & Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships) as well as Collaborative projects, participants from Switzerland request funding from the EU (EU contribution).
  2. To ensure the eligibility of consortium submitting collaborative projects: A consortium has to consist of at least three independent partners from at least three EU Member States or Associated Countries, in addition to the Swiss partner(s).

In practice it means that “whenever taking part in a H2020 proposal submission, Swiss partners should request their eligible project costs as grant from the European Commission as if Switzerland would be associated from January 2017 onwards. The criteria for being eligible for European funding has been defined as the signature date of the Grant Agreement (GA) and the GA signature of any proposal to be submitted will be in 2017. However, it is still essential that a consortium be composed of at least at least 3 organisations from different EU Member States or Associated countries in addition to the Swiss partner in order to be sure that the project is eligible in the case that Switzerland will not be associated as of 2017. Moreover and as already today, Swiss partners can also coordinate projects, whatever the status of Switzerland will be as of 2017.”

For more details, please see the factsheet of the European Commission, point 8, and the SERI factsheet.