How to Structure a Winning Horizon Europe Proposal
If you have ever opened a Horizon Europe call and wondered where to even begin, you are not alone. The application process is long, technical, and highly competitive - with success rates often below 15%. But proposals that succeed all share one thing: they speak the language of the evaluation criteria.
This guide walks you through the three pillars of every Horizon Europe proposal - Excellence, Impact, and Implementation - and explains what evaluators actually want to see in each one. Whether you are writing your first proposal or your tenth, understanding how these sections work together is the foundation of a compelling application.
How Horizon Europe Proposals Are Evaluated
Before writing a single word, you need to understand how your proposal will be judged. Every Horizon Europe proposal is assessed by a panel of independent experts against three criteria, each carrying equal weight:
Excellence
Max Score: 5 points
What It Tests: Scientific quality, ambition, and soundness of approach
Impact
Max Score: 5 points
What It Tests: Expected outcomes, pathways to use, and dissemination plans
Implementation
Max Score: 5 points
What It Tests: Work plan, team competence, and resource allocation
Each criterion is scored from 0 to 5, and proposals typically need an average of 3.5 or above across all criteria — plus minimum thresholds per criterion — to be considered for funding. Crucially, a weak score in any single pillar can eliminate an otherwise strong proposal.
Key principle: all three sections must be equally strong.
Evaluators read your proposal independently and score each section on its own merits. A brilliant scientific idea will not compensate for a vague work plan or an unconvincing impact section. Every pillar must stand alone.
Part 1: Excellence
The Excellence section is where you make the scientific case for your project. It is not simply about showing that your team is competent — it is about convincing evaluators that your research question is worth asking, your approach is the right one, and your ambition is credible.
What evaluators are looking for
A clearly defined problem or research gap that your project addresses
An ambitious but realistic research hypothesis or innovation objective
A methodology that is scientifically sound and appropriate to the challenge
Clear articulation of what is new or beyond the current state of the art
Interdisciplinary or cross-sector perspectives where relevant
How to structure your Excellence section
1. Define the problem with precision
Do not start with generalities. Evaluators read dozens of proposals — phrases like 'climate change is a global challenge' or 'digitalisation is transforming industry' tell them nothing. Instead, identify a specific, documented gap that your project will address. Cite recent literature. Show you understand the field.
2. State your objectives clearly
Your objectives should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. Write them as a numbered list. Evaluators need to be able to map these to your work packages later in the proposal — so be precise about what you will actually deliver.
3. Explain your approach and methodology
This is the heart of the section. Describe what you will do, why this method is the best approach, and what contingency plans you have if things do not go as expected. Evaluators reward intellectual rigour — acknowledging risks and explaining how you will mitigate them shows maturity, not weakness.
4. Position against the state of the art
Be explicit about what already exists and why it is not enough. This is where many proposals fall short: they describe the existing landscape but fail to articulate clearly what gap their project fills. Your innovation needs to be unmistakable.
✓ Do this
Reference specific recent publications and existing initiatives. Explain concisely what your project does differently and why that difference matters scientifically.
✗ Avoid this
Vague statements about 'advancing knowledge' or 'filling a gap' without specifying what the gap actually is. Evaluators will not give you the benefit of the doubt.
Part 2: Impact
The Impact section is consistently the weakest in unsuccessful proposals — and the most misunderstood. Many applicants treat it as an afterthought or confuse it with dissemination activities. In reality, Impact is where you make the case that your project matters beyond the research itself.
Since 2021, Horizon Europe has placed Impact on equal footing with Excellence. This reflects the programme's mission-driven nature: funding is not just for good science, it is for science that changes something in the real world.
The three dimensions of Impact
Impact in Horizon Europe has three sub-criteria:
1. Project-level impacts — what changes as a direct result of your work
2. Pathways to impact — how your results will reach and influence their intended audiences
3. Measures to maximise impact — your dissemination, exploitation, and communication (DEC) plans
Project-level impacts
These are the specific changes your project will bring about — in knowledge, in practice, in policy, or in technology. Avoid generic language. 'Contributing to sustainable development' is not an impact — 'providing validated protocols for on-farm carbon measurement, adopted by at least three national agricultural agencies within two years of project completion' is an impact.
Use the call text to anchor your impacts. The work programme will already describe the expected outcomes and impacts for your topic — your proposal must directly address these, using the same language where appropriate, and adding your project-specific contributions on top.
Pathways to impact
This sub-section asks you to think strategically about how your results will reach the people who need them. Consider:
Who are the primary users of your results? (Policymakers, industry, practitioners, citizens?)
What will they do differently as a result of your project?
What barriers might prevent uptake, and how will you address them?
Which channels — publications, events, policy briefs, standards bodies, platforms - will you use?
Dissemination, Exploitation and Communication (DEC)
DEC is not a box-ticking exercise. Evaluators want to see a genuine strategy, not a list of conferences you plan to attend. A strong DEC section includes:
A dissemination plan targeting the scientific community (open-access publications, conferences, datasets)
An exploitation plan explaining how results will be taken up commercially or in policy
A communication plan for broader public audiences, where relevant
Clear ownership: who in the consortium is responsible for each activity?
A note on open science:
Horizon Europe requires open access to publications and encourages open access to research data. Address this explicitly in your Impact section — evaluators will look for it. Describe your data management approach and how you will ensure results remain accessible beyond the project lifetime.
Part 3: Implementation
The Implementation section is where your proposal becomes a project. Here, evaluators assess whether you have the team, the plan, and the resources to actually deliver what you have promised in Excellence and Impact. A strong Implementation section is coherent, realistic, and leaves no obvious questions unanswered.
Work packages: the backbone of your proposal
Horizon Europe proposals are organised around work packages (WPs) — the major blocks of activity that together constitute your project. Each WP should represent a coherent stream of work with clear objectives, deliverables, and milestones.
A typical structure includes:
WP1: Project Management and Coordination
WP2–WPn: Research, development, or innovation activities (the scientific core)
WP(n-1): Pilot activities, demonstrators, or validation
WP(n): Dissemination, Exploitation, and Communication
Each WP should have a clear leader (which partner is responsible?), defined tasks, and outputs (deliverables and milestones) with specific due dates. Evaluators look for logical sequencing — does the work plan make sense? Are dependencies clearly identified?
Team competence and consortium composition
Implementation is also where you demonstrate that your team can deliver. For each partner, describe:
Their specific role in the project and which WPs they lead or contribute to
Relevant past experience and key publications or achievements
How their expertise complements the rest of the consortium
Avoid padding. Evaluators are experienced researchers and practitioners — they can tell the difference between a partner who is genuinely needed and one who has been added to fill a geographic or sectoral quota.
Budget and resources
Your budget must be realistic and justified. Lump sum contracts — now standard in most Horizon Europe calls — require you to define your budget per work package rather than per cost category. This makes it more important than ever to think carefully about what each WP requires in terms of personnel, travel, equipment, and subcontracting.
On lump sum budgets:
Under lump sum rules, your budget is fixed per work package at the start of the project. Underspending does not trigger a refund — but failing to deliver a WP means you will not receive payment for it. This makes a well-structured, clearly costed work plan critical, not optional.
Risk management
Every strong Implementation section includes a risk table. List your main project risks — scientific, technical, operational — and for each one, describe the likelihood, potential impact, and your mitigation strategy. This is not a formality. Evaluators want evidence that your team has thought carefully about what could go wrong and has a plan.
How the Three Sections Work Together
The most common mistake in Horizon Europe proposals is treating Excellence, Impact, and Implementation as three separate essays rather than one coherent argument. In the strongest proposals, these sections reinforce each other:
Your research objectives (Excellence) map directly onto your work packages (Implementation)
Your expected results (Excellence) connect clearly to your impacts (Impact)
Your dissemination activities (Impact) are resourced within the work plan (Implementation)
Your team's competences (Implementation) give credibility to your ambition (Excellence)
Before submitting, read your proposal as an evaluator would: can you follow the thread from problem to approach to results to impact to plan? If any link in that chain is weak, it will cost you points.
Internal consistency check - ask yourself:
Does every objective appear in at least one work package? Does every deliverable connect to a stated result? Does every stated impact have a pathway and a responsible partner? If the answer to any of these is no, your proposal has a gap.
Practical Tips Before You Submit
Beyond the structure, experienced evaluators consistently identify the same issues in weak proposals. Here is what to check:
Your proposal must respond to the specific topic - not to Horizon Europe in general. Use the call text language. Read the call text three times.
Your panel will include experts in your field, but also generalists. Your Excellence section should be understandable to an intelligent non-specialist. Write for a generalist evaluator.
How many partners? What sample size? How many pilots? Which countries? Vagueness signals uncertainty. Be specific about numbers.
Different parts of the proposal have strict page limits. Exceeding them means your text will be cut off - evaluators will not read what they cannot see. Check your page limits.
Have someone outside your consortium read the proposal before submission. Fresh eyes catch gaps that authors miss. Leave time for external review.
The evaluation criteria are public. Before submitting, go through each sub-criterion and make sure your proposal addresses it explicitly. Use the evaluation form as your checklist.
Final Thoughts
A winning Horizon Europe proposal is not simply a description of good research. It is a persuasive argument that your project is needed, feasible, and will make a difference — told through the specific language and structure that evaluators use to assess it.
Understanding the logic of Excellence, Impact, and Implementation is the first step. The next is practising how to bring them together into a single, coherent narrative that moves an evaluator from 'interesting idea' to 'this deserves to be funded'.
At SublimeHub, proposal writing is at the core of what we do. If you are developing a Horizon Europe application and would like expert support — whether on the full proposal or specific sections — we would be glad to help.
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