Halfway down the Horizon 2020 road, the European Commission (EC) has taken stock of the implementation of Horizon 2020 so far. The EC published the Staff Working Document (SWD) on the interim evaluation of Horizon 2020 and aims to make adjustments in such a way that it will contribute to improving the implementation of Horizon 2020 in its last Work Programme 2018-2020.

Areas which have been indentified where Horizon 2020 and its successor would need to increase their efforts include:

- Underfunding, which has led to massive oversubscription across the board in the whole of Horizon 2020. In addition, it resulted in an enormous waste of resources for applicants and of good proposals for Europe.
- Better support for breakthrough, market-creating innovation is needed. To this aim, a European Innovation Council (EIC) shall be created in the next Framework Programme.

- Greater outreach to civil society in terms of better explaining results and impacts, but also in involving them better in the programme co-design (agenda-setting) and its implementation (co-creation).

More information can be found on the Swisscore website and the European Commission's news ticker.

Source: Swisscore, EC