Review and submission
Reviewing your proposal
Once you have a complete proposal, it is time to review. In addition to internal review by the consortium partners, you should ask peers outside the project to review. Ideally you should have someone outside your discipline read it too – if they cannot understand the objectives neither will the evaluators.
It is also useful to ask someone in the university research office or your NCP to do a pre-submission review of your application. They will provide feedback on a good draft proposal.
Submitting your proposal
The project coordinator is responsible for submitting the final proposal. It is highly recommended to submit as early as possible and at least 48 hours before the deadline. Keep in mind that on the day of the deadline, portals are often overloaded with applications resulting in longer than usual upload times. You can submit your proposal several times before the deadline, to make updates and changes. Also keep in mind the time difference: a 5pm deadline in Brussels is 4pm in Ireland.
As the coordinator submits the proposal, all documents are combined into a single package and sealed. The coordinator will receive an electronic receipt with the time and date of submission, and a confirmation email. If you do not get this email, it means your proposal has not been submitted. In that case you should try again or contact the European Commission IT Helpdesk.
Once you have submitted the proposal, you will not generally hear back from the EU until after the evaluation has been completed.
You cannot make any further corrections or re-submissions after the call deadline; however, you can have read-only access to the proposal you submitted.
Evaluation process
Shortly after submission you will see on the portal the number of proposals submitted to your particular call and the approximate date results will be available.
Unless stated otherwise in the call conditions, you can expect evaluation and grant preparation to follow these timelines:
- Information on evaluation outcome: around 5 months after submission deadline (for two stage calls – 3 months for the first stage, and 5 months for the second stage)
- Indicative date for signing grant agreements: around 8 months after submission deadline.
Evaluation criteria are outlined in Annex D and Annex F of the Work Programmes (General Annexes to the Work Programme can be downloaded from the HRB website).
What your NCP can do for you
The Horizon Europe Health NCP can assist you in a pre-submission review of your proposal. For technical issues with submission, the European Commission IT Helpdesk is your main point of contact.
Want to know more? Contact your HRB Health NCP.