Why Even Good Horizon Europe Proposals Lose and What Winners Do Differently

Insights from David Donnerer, Head of Proposals at RTDS Group

A technically excellent idea is no longer enough to win Horizon Europe funding.

As competition intensifies, more proposals are reaching the evaluation threshold, yet many strong applications are still left unfunded. The reason is simple but uncomfortable: applicants are competing against ever-stronger science and increasingly polished applications.

For David Donnerer, Head of Proposals at RTDS Group, this makes one quality more important than ever: clarity.

“A proposal isn’t just about describing your science or technology. It’s about telling a compelling story that evaluators can quickly grasp and understand.”

David Donnerer leads a Horizon Europe Training for the National Institute of Chemistry of Slovenia

The volume of Horizon Europe applications has increased significantly in 2026 already, along with the overall quality of submissions. The growing availability of AI tools has contributed to this shift, lowering some of the barriers that previously discouraged organisations from applying, including the challenge of drafting complex proposals in English. At the same time, cuts to national research and innovation funding programmes across Europe are pushing more organisations towards Horizon Europe as an alternative source of funding.

The result is a crowded field where meeting the quality threshold is no longer necessarily enough. “In many cases, only a near-perfect score will provide a realistic chance of securing funding,” explains David. Proposals need to make a compelling case across Excellence, Impact and Implementation, all the while remaining clear and easy to evaluate.

One of the biggest traps in proposal writing is forgetting who the document is actually for. Researchers naturally want to explain their innovation in detail, but evaluators don’t have the time, or perhaps even the specialist background, to decode a proposal buried in technical language and project-specific terminology.

The starting point should therefore be the problem you are solving, not the technology you have developed. Why does the problem matter? What is currently missing? Why is your approach different? And what will change if the project succeeds?

A strong proposal creates a clear narrative connecting these questions.

If a call asks you to demonstrate something, for example, simply proposing further laboratory development may not be enough. If validation is expected, the proposal needs to explain what will be validated, against which criteria, and with which users or stakeholders. The call should ultimately become the backbone of the proposal.

This is where many technically strong applications lose ground. Applicants tend to be comfortable explaining what their research will achieve. The harder part is demonstrating what happens because those results exist.

Who will use them? How will they reach the market or be adopted? Which stakeholders need to be involved? What barriers could prevent uptake? What measurable economic, environmental or societal benefits can realistically be expected? The strongest proposals start with the desired impact and work backwards.

Dr. Stephen Webb, presents at a Horizon Europe Training for the National Institute of Chemistry of Slovenia

As David puts it, the key question is not “How will we communicate our results?” but rather: “How will our results create impact?” That means involving industry, end users, policymakers and other relevant stakeholders early and not waiting until the research is finished to start thinking about uptake.

By the time a consortium is discussing a proposal six weeks before the deadline, the most important strategic decisions should already have been made. Ideally, proposal preparation should begin around six months in advance. The first step is identifying the right call. A strong idea forced into the wrong topic will struggle regardless of how well it is written.

Then comes consortium building, including the right mix of academia, industry, SMEs and end users. For Innovation Actions in particular, the participation of companies with a credible role in demonstrating, exploiting or bringing results to market can be critical. Where international cooperation is required, those partners should also be identified from the outset.

Before developing the full proposal, David recommends reducing the concept to a two-page document. This simple exercise forces the consortium to answer the essential questions before getting lost in detail. What is the problem? What is the proposed solution? What is innovative? Who needs to be involved? What will the project deliver? And what impact will those results create?

There is no question that AI has changed proposal development.

Used properly, AI can help teams analyse call texts, identify relevant terminology, structure information, review content for consistency, map stakeholders, support competitor analysis and accelerate drafting. It can save considerable time, but there’s a danger in confusing efficient writing with good proposal development.

When AI can produce polished paragraphs in seconds, simply put, polished paragraphs become less of a competitive advantage. Evaluators are ultimately looking for credible innovation, scientific depth, realistic implementation, and a convincing pathway to impact. It’s worth noting, however, that AI-generated text can also become generic or disconnected from the specific requirements of a call. It may overlook technical nuances, introduce inconsistencies, or make claims that sound convincing without being properly supported.

The best use of AI is therefore a productivity enhancer, not a substitute for expertise. Use it to structure evidence, challenge your thinking, and improve clarity. Keep strategic decisions, technical logic, and critical judgement with the people who fully understand the project.

There’s one final ingredient that is often underestimated: creativity. Horizon Europe proposals have strict templates and evaluation criteria, but that does not mean they have to be a difficult read. A strong narrative can draw the evaluator into the problem from the first page. A well-designed infographic, for example, can make a complex methodology immediately understandable. A clear diagram can show how project activities lead to results and impact far more effectively than another page of text.

This is where communication expertise can make a genuine difference to proposal development. Not by “marketing” the science, but by making the project’s underlying logic easier to understand.

In today’s Horizon Europe environment, successful proposals need to be excellent across the board. The winning mindset isn’t “how do we make our technology sound impressive?” It’s “how do we make it impossible for an evaluator to misunderstand why this project matters, why our approach is credible, and why this consortium can deliver it?”

Start early. Read the call ruthlessly. Build the consortium around capabilities rather than familiarity. Design impact from day one. Use AI intelligently. And give the narrative the same attention you give the science.

Because ultimately, proposal writing is not about saying more. It is about making the right things impossible to miss.

At RTDS Group, this strategy starts well before the writing begins. From analysing value chains and defining impact pathways to identifying exploitable results, building the right consortium and supporting proposal development through to submission, RTDS works with SMEs, industry, universities and research and technology organisations across all six Horizon Europe clusters.

Planning your next Horizon Europe proposal? Partner with RTDS Group. Our team can help you turn your project idea into a clear, competitive funding strategy, from concept development and consortium building to proposal preparation and submission.