Increased grant time in Eurostars
Eurostars will implement a quicker time-to-grant under Horizon 2020 that should bring key benefits to SMEs.
National agencies managing the funding programme have committed themselves to a maximum time period of seven months between the submission of an application for funding and the moment when a grant contract with the public authorities is signed. The innovation agencies behind the Eurostars programme and the central Eurostars office in Brussels have so far reduced what is referred to as ‘time-to-grant’ to a median period of time of less than eight months, a 25% improvement since the start of the programme, suggesting that seven months will be easy to achieve by the authorities managing the programme.
During FP7, the median time delay from application to grant contract was 10 months, widely considered to be too long by most experts. A shorter time period is considered essential to the success of Eurostars, the only European funding programme to be specifically dedicated to SMEs which focus on innovative technologies.
