Novelties in the Horizon Europe work programmes 2025: applicants to know about

Horizon Europe Office in Ukraine, NRFU, informs that in line with the simplification goals of the European Commission, some novelties have been implemented for the 2025 proposals, as stated in the general introduction and general annexes of the work programmes:

• NEW! The Do No Significant Harm (DNSH) principle has been removed from both application and evaluation forms from WP2025 onwards. Aspects related to the DNSH principle must only be included in proposals when required to in the topic conditions (currently only in the EIC accelerator topics).
• NEW! Changes to the gender criterion for ex-aequo proposals: The gender balance criterion to establish a priority ranking among proposals with the same score (“ex-aequo criteria”) was amended in the General Annexes and now concerns only researchers with a leading role in the proposal.
• NEW! It is no longer a requirement for participants to demonstrate the robustness of the AI tools used, unless this is required by the topic conditions. Assessment of the robustness of AI tools will only be performed when specified in the topic description or conditions.

• Increasingly more proposals will be using 2-stage proposal models, where the 1st stage proposals are only 10 pages long and only require the writing of the excellence and the first part of the impact sections.
• Increasingly more proposals will be using lump-sum budgeting. If you are still unsure of lump sum budgeting, the NCP Portal has a dedicated section with training videos, guidelines, and more to help you understand this.