On the 30th of November, 2011 the European Commission officially announced a new program “Horizon-2020” (Horizon-2020 / H2020), which is designed to combine funding of researches and innovations in the European Union. The program has been implemented in 2014 and will last until 2020. The budget of the program is about 80 billion euros. The agreement on Ukraine’s participation in the program “Horizon-2020” was signed on the 3rd of March, 2015 in Brussels. On August 2015 the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko approved the ratification of the agreement. The “Horizon-2020” is the an assignee of the previous program «Framework program-7» (FP7), which operated from 2007 to 2013.
Features of the Horizon-2020 in comparison with other programs are the following:
- simplifying of funding of works due to a simple scheme of a reimbursement and an introduction of a common approach to participants, reducing time for grants;
- the integration of researches and innovations, funding of projects from an idea to market entry;
- the development of business opportunities with a focus on general social challenges;
- providing more opportunities for young promising researchers to promote their ideas and receive funding.
Currently there is a network of national contact points in Ukraine that provide personalized support and answer questions concerning the program Horizon-2020. There are 33 such points.
Despite the considerable amount of information presented on the websites of national contact points towards the description of the program, its priorities, requirements for partnership, procedures for the preparation and evaluation of proposals, for Ukrainian beneficiaries, who were first introduced to the program, it is difficult to understand the philosophy of the program and to use maximally its opportunities in their own interests.
We evaluated the participation of Ukrainian beneficiaries in the program Horizon-2020 during 2014-2015, which can be found in a research note of an analyst of the European dialogue Oleksandr Gyrych.