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Analysing Horizon 2020 (2) - how to destruct capital and ideas

In the 4th call to the EIC Accelerator pilot program of the EU in October 2020, 4,223 applications from companies were submitted. The European Commission is funding 38 SMEs from 18 countries. The success rate across Europe is an incredible 0.9% !!!. In Germany 7 projects are promoted. With this absurdly low success rate,
the EU Commission is primarily destroying the capital of companies. According to information of employees of the Commission one assumes costs for an application of up to € 60,000. With a maximum funding of € 2.5 million per company, this results in a funding of € 95 million for all successful applicants. The total costs of the 4,223 applicants amount to up to € 253 million. Thus, € 158 million were dumped by the applicants.

The EIC Accelerator will remain an important part of the SME-specific innovation funding in Horizon Europe next year. In order to be an SME supporting programme it needs a much bigger budget - otherwise it is rather causing damage!