5 Things to Prepare Before Applying for an EU Grant

The success rate for Horizon Europe proposals is roughly 16%. For LIFE, it's around 24%. For Eurostars, about 29%. These numbers are competitive, but they don't tell the full story. In Horizon Europe, around 70% of proposals are rated "excellent" by evaluators — yet only 16.5% receive funding. The proposals that get funded are not always the most innovative. They are the most prepared.

Evaluators spend a maximum of four hours per proposal. They assess eight to ten proposals in a batch. In that time, they need to understand your project, verify your claims, and score you against published criteria. If your application contains inconsistencies, missing information, or unclear cost structures, those four hours will not be kind to you.

The difference between funded and unfunded proposals is rarely the idea. It's the preparation that happens before anyone starts writing.

Here are five things to get right before you open the application template.

1. A single page of facts you'd bet money on

Before writing begins, you need one document — a single page — that contains the core facts about your organisation and project. Product specifications. Team locations. Company registration dates. Technology readiness level. Revenue figures. Headcount.

This sounds obvious, but it is surprisingly difficult to get right. We see it regularly: the pitch deck says one thing, the CTO says another, and the employment contracts say a third. In a normal business context, these small inconsistencies don't matter. In a grant application, they get amplified.

A typical EU grant application has four or more annexes, all referencing the same underlying facts. If your concept note says you have 15 employees but your budget assumes 22 person-months from eight specialists, the evaluator will notice. If your technology description claims TRL 6 but your work plan starts with laboratory validation activities, that's a contradiction.

Concrete detail: Personnel cost calculations in most EU programmes use 1,720 productive hours per year as the denominator for hourly rate calculations. If your HR records don't support the hourly rate you claim in the budget — because the actual salary, working hours, or contract terms tell a different story — this will surface during evaluation or, worse, during a financial audit years later.

Get the facts on paper. Get them agreed by the people who know. Then use that single page as the source of truth for every section of the application.

2. Your documents — and your partners' documents

Every EU grant application requires supporting documents. The specific requirements vary by programme, but the baseline is consistent: legal registration, financial statements, declarations, CVs of key personnel, and proof of eligibility.

For single-applicant programmes like the Innovation Fund or EIC Accelerator, this is manageable — one organisation, one set of documents. For consortium programmes like Horizon Europe or Eurostars, the complexity multiplies. Every partner needs their own EU portal registration (PIC number), their own declarations of honour, their own financial data, and their own CVs.

The PIC registration itself takes five to ten minutes. But we see organisations leave it to deadline week, only to discover that the validation process requires additional documentation or has an unexpected delay.

The numbers are clear on this. Consortium applications have a 5.8% administrative exclusion rate compared to 1.2% for single-applicant calls. Each additional partner multiplies the risk of a missing document, an incomplete registration, or a declaration signed by the wrong person.

The European Research Executive Agency explicitly advises applicants: "Don't leave submission to the last minute" and "Start partner search well before the call opens." This is not generic advice. It reflects the reality that document collection from multiple organisations across multiple countries takes longer than anyone expects.

Start document collection on day one. Create a shared checklist. Assign responsibility. Follow up weekly. The proposal itself is hard enough without spending deadline week chasing a partner's financial statements.

3. Know your co-financing story before the first draft

EU grants do not cover 100% of project costs in most programmes. The remainder — your co-financing — must come from your own resources. The percentage varies significantly:

These percentages are non-negotiable. And the requirement goes beyond simply having the money — you need to confirm the amount, the source, and the evidence before writing starts.

For companies with boards, this typically means a board resolution confirming the commitment. For startups, a founder confirmation letter supported by a recent bank statement. For consortia, each partner needs to confirm their individual contribution in writing.

Financial capacity matters more than applicants realise. The European Commission applies a financial capacity assessment. If your debt exceeds your equity by a factor of six or more, or if your equity is negative, you may face enhanced monitoring requirements — or in some cases, a reduced pre-financing payment that affects your cash flow from day one.

We've seen applications stall on deadline week because nobody had confirmed where the co-financing would come from — not the amount, but the actual source and evidence. A verbal "we'll cover it" from a board member is not a co-financing commitment. Get it documented early.

4. Honest cost data with a clear basis

Your budget is not a wish list. Every line item needs a traceable basis, and evaluators are trained to identify costs that lack one.

Personnel costs are the largest budget category in most EU grants. Every person-day needs an hourly rate derived from actual salary data, using the 1,720 productive hours per year rule. This means you need real payslip data or employment contracts — not estimates.

Subcontracting requires a clear scope: number of days multiplied by a daily rate, with justification for why the work cannot be done in-house. Lump sum subcontracting without a breakdown is a red flag. Best practice across most programmes is to keep subcontracting below 15% of total budget, though the exact threshold varies.

Travel costs must respect your organisation's own internal travel policy. If your company policy limits economy-class flights and standard hotel rates, your grant budget cannot claim business class and five-star hotels — even if the programme rules would technically allow it.

Common ineligible costs that trip up applicants: bonuses, dividends, provisions for future losses, exchange rate losses, and deductible VAT. These seem obvious in a list, but they regularly appear in draft budgets.

Concrete detail: If your budget includes a line item called "miscellaneous" or "contingency," it will not survive evaluation. EU grant budgets require every cost to be justified and categorised. Undefined budget lines signal that you haven't done the work to understand your actual costs.

5. One person who owns the application

An EU grant application touches every part of your organisation. Technical specifications from R&D. Financial data from the CFO. Legal documents from administration. Strategic framing from the CEO. HR data for personnel costs. Partner coordination across borders.

The biggest process risk we see is not a weak proposal — it's a diffused one. The CEO answers some questions, the CTO handles others, the finance team fills in the budget, and nobody has a complete picture. When the evaluator reads the result, the inconsistencies are visible: the technical section describes one project, the budget funds a different one, and the impact section promises a third.

You need one person who owns the application end to end. Not someone who writes every section, but someone who can confirm facts, deliver documents, and make decisions without scheduling a meeting. Someone who knows what every section says and can verify that they all tell the same story.

The application has a deadline. Every "let me check and get back to you" is a day lost. Every decision that requires a committee meeting is a week lost. One person with authority and access is worth more than a team of ten with neither.

Concrete detail: Evaluators allocate a maximum of four hours per proposal and assess eight to ten proposals in a batch. Your proposal needs to be internally consistent because they will cross-reference sections. If section 1 describes your team as five people and section 3 budgets for twelve, they will notice — and they will score accordingly.

Start before the call opens

The pattern across all five points is the same: the work that matters most happens before you start writing. Facts, documents, co-financing, cost data, and ownership — these are not things you figure out as you draft the proposal. They are the foundation the proposal is built on.

The good news is that none of this is complicated. It's not about being a grant expert or having written twenty proposals before. It's about preparation — the kind of structured, honest preparation that any well-run organisation can do.

If you're considering an EU grant application, start with these five items. When the call opens, you'll be ready to write — not scrambling to collect the basics.

Want to know where you stand? We offer a free readiness assessment to help you evaluate whether your organisation is prepared for an EU grant application — and what to do if it's not quite there yet. Book a call to get started.

If you're new to EU grants, our guide on how EU grants work covers the fundamentals. And if you need help identifying the right programme and building your application strategy, explore our eligibility and strategy service.