Why EU Grant Proposals Fail: 7 Mistakes from Real Evaluation Reports

Scope mismatch is the fastest route to automatic rejection. Calls in Horizon Europe Pillar II are defined at the level of specific “expected outcomes” written into the Work Programme. Evaluators are instructed to score proposals that do not demonstrably address those outcomes below threshold on Excellence, regardless of how technically strong the underlying project is.

“The proposal does not sufficiently address the expected outcomes listed in the call. The connection between the project objectives and the specific challenge described in the Work Programme remains unclear.”

Typical ESR language, Horizon Europe Pillar II collaborative calls

This mistake is distinct from low quality. The project may be excellent for a different call. The fix requires reading the full Work Programme section, not just the call title, and mapping each expected outcome to a specific section of the proposal.

The Excellence criterion requires proposals to demonstrate that the proposed work is “ambitious and goes beyond the state-of-the-art.” This is one of the most common below-threshold findings. Evaluators are domain experts. A superficial literature review, selective citations, or claims of novelty that ignore competing approaches are spotted immediately.

“The applicant does not convincingly position the proposed research relative to recent work in the field. Several relevant competing approaches are not discussed, and the specific contribution beyond existing methods is not sufficiently articulated.”

Typical ESR language, ERC Starting Grant calls

Three specific failures recur in ESR feedback on this point:

• 1.Cherry-picked comparisons. Citing only older or weaker competing work while ignoring recent publications or commercially available alternatives.
• 2.Generic novelty claims. Statements like “this has never been done before” without evidence. Evaluators expect a structured comparison: what exists, where it falls short, and exactly how your approach differs.
• 3.No positioning table. A comparative table showing your approach versus alternatives across key dimensions is a standard expectation in funded proposals. Its absence is noticed.

The Impact criterion is weighted equally with Excellence and Implementation in most Horizon Europe calls. Yet it consistently generates the weakest scores. According to the European Research Executive Agency, a typical mistake is “addressing too few impact dimensions” and confusing project results with project impact.

“The impact section reads as a list of results rather than a demonstration of societal and economic change. Expected impacts are described qualitatively without Key Performance Indicators, timelines, or a plausible pathway from project output to real-world change.”

REA common mistakes guidance; Europa Media Trainings ESR analysis

Horizon Europe defines impact across three dimensions: scientific or technological, economic, and societal. A proposal that only covers one or two of these will be scored accordingly. Evaluators also look for:

• Specific, quantified KPIs with target values and measurement methods
• A credible exploitation plan with named commercial pathways, not “we will seek licensing deals”
• An explanation of who benefits and when, including intermediate and end beneficiaries
• Connection to specific EU policy objectives such as Green Deal targets or Digital Decade benchmarks

The Implementation criterion covers the work plan, budget, and consortium composition. Evaluators read it to answer one question: can this team actually deliver what they are promising, in the time they are claiming, with the resources they are requesting?

“The work plan does not provide sufficient detail on the methodology for Work Package 3. Task dependencies are not clearly articulated, and the timeline for the validation phase appears optimistic given the regulatory requirements described elsewhere in the proposal.”

Typical ESR language, Horizon Europe collaborative projects

Three internal consistency failures are flagged most often:

• 1.Disconnected sections. An objective described in Section 1 (Excellence) that does not appear in the work packages in Section 3 (Implementation), or an impact claim in Section 2 that has no corresponding dissemination activity. Evaluators cross-reference sections.
• 2.Unrealistic timelines. Regulatory approval, clinical trials, or user validation studies compressed into implausibly short periods. If you describe a complex regulatory pathway in Section 1, the work plan must reflect the actual timeline.
• 3.Missing risk analysis. Horizon Europe proposals are expected to include a risk table covering technical, organisational, and external risks with mitigation measures. Proposals that omit this or treat it as a formality are scored down.

Evaluators assess consortia against two questions: does this team have the expertise to deliver the work, and does the composition make sense for the call objectives? PNO Innovation, one of Europe’s largest grant consultancies, identifies three structural mistakes that appear consistently in rejected consortium-based proposals.

• 1.Geographic concentration. Several Horizon Europe call topics explicitly favour multi-country teams. A consortium dominated by organisations from a single country triggers scrutiny on whether the “European added value” criterion is met.
• 2.Partners without a clear role. Adding organisations to reach minimum consortium size, without assigning them meaningful tasks, is visible in the work plan. Evaluators comment on partners whose contribution is listed only as “dissemination and stakeholder engagement” with no specific tasks or deliverables.
• 3.Missing end-user representation. For applied research calls, the absence of a partner who will actually use the outputs, such as a public authority, a health system, or an industry operator, weakens both the Impact and Implementation scores.

“While individual partner competences are described, the synergies between partners are not sufficiently demonstrated. It is not clear why this specific combination of organisations is the optimal consortium to address the challenge.”

Typical ESR language, Horizon Europe Pillar II Research and Innovation Actions

Horizon Europe introduced a stronger requirement for exploitation planning compared to Horizon 2020, but many proposals still treat dissemination and exploitation as a compliance checkbox rather than a substantive section. This directly impacts the Impact score.

The distinction between the three concepts matters to evaluators:

Evaluators flag proposals that address exploitation as “too early to consider” or that list only academic publications as exploitation outputs. For industry-facing calls, the absence of a route-to-market analysis is a near-automatic score reduction on Impact.

Each proposal is reviewed by three to five independent experts who spend roughly two to three hours on it before the consensus meeting. Dense, unstructured text that buries key information penalises even technically strong proposals. This is not a stylistic issue: it directly affects whether evaluators can find and credit the content that would justify a higher score.

Common structural failures cited in ESR feedback:

• 1.Not following the template structure. The proposal template in the Funding and Tenders Portal has specific sections for a reason. Merging or reordering sections forces evaluators to search for information, which reduces scores.
• 2.Objectives that are not objectives. Objectives must be specific, measurable, and bounded by the project duration. “To advance the understanding of X” is a research direction, not an objective. “To develop and validate a prototype of X achieving performance threshold Y by Month 30” is an objective.
• 3.Unexplained acronyms and undefined terminology. Technical jargon without definition is penalised more in multi-disciplinary panels where not every evaluator is a specialist in your exact sub-field.
• 4.No figures, tables, or diagrams. A 45-page proposal with no visual representation of the architecture, methodology, or work plan is harder to evaluate than one that uses structured visuals to support the text.

“The proposal would benefit from clearer objectives. As written, it is difficult to identify what specific, measurable outcomes the consortium commits to delivering within the project lifetime.”

Typical ESR language, Horizon Europe collaborative projects