My presentation at the WIRE 2016 Conference (session "Strategies & Synergies – Understanding how to implement funds most efficiently" ) , http://www.wire2016.eu

1. Dr Dimitri CORPAKIS
Head of Unit, EC RTD.B5, Spreading Excellence and
Widening Participation
Designing
and implementing Synergies:
Coordinating Investment in
Research and Innovation

2. Synergies ?
What Synergies ?

3. Synergies happen when
different processes are at
play but they all contribute to
the same result

4. What ?
• Strengthening synergies between Horizon 2020 and the European
Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) is about building
meaningful interactions between investment strategies and
interventions as a way to have significant impacts on the economy,
combining place-based innovation investments in smart
specialisation priorities with world-class research and innovation
initiatives, thus ensuring a higher impact of the funds.
• Synergies expected to gain strength as both Horizon 2020 and the
ESIF Common Provisions Regulation include for the first time a
relative legal mandate for their development, not only among them
but also with other programmes, such as COSME, Erasmus+ and
Connecting Europe Facility.

5. The Multiannual Financial
Framework 2014-2020:
• Key challenge: stabilise the financial and economic system while taking
measures to create economic opportunities
1. Smart & inclusive growth* (€451 billion)
2. Sustainable growth, natural resources (€373
billion)
3. Security and citizenship (€16 billion)
4. Global Europe (€58 billion)
5. Administration (€61.6 billion)
(figures are given in constant prices)
Education,
Youth, Sport
Connecting
Europe*
Cohesion
Competitive
Business
SMEs
HORIZON
2020*
TOTAL
€960 billion

6. Smart Specialisation: Policy linkages
Smart
Specialisation
ESIF
COSME
Horizon
2020
Common Provisions
Regulation 2013
Ex Ante Conditionality
Industrial Policy
Communication 2014
Thematic Smart
Specialisation
Platforms
Innovation Union
2010
Annex on policy
design
Economic
Transformation
Agenda !

7. Source: Final ESIF partnership agreements as of December 2015
Soon all open data available at: https://cohesiondata.ec.europa.eu/
ESIF programming 2014-20: State of Play
In billion EUR
• EUR 454 billion of ESIF + EUR 183 billion of national co-financing
• 456 national and regional and 79 INTERREG cooperation programmes
• Concentration on 11 Thematic Objectives
ca €122 billion
ca €234 billion

8. Source: Final ESIF partnership agreements as of December 2015
Soon all open data available at: https://cohesiondata.ec.europa.eu/
ESIF: How much do we invest?
• Total EU budget for RIS3: EUR 43.7 billion of ESIF
• Plus national EUR 22 billion
• EUR 10 billion in financial instruments / the rest in grants
More than 120 RIS3
(regional and
national)

9. Horizon 2020: the first 100 calls
• Over € 15 billion funding over first two years
(2014-2015)
• In total, more than 36 000 proposals
evaluated and over 3200 projects started
• Robust and user-friendly IT systems and
Participant Portal (just over 3 million visits per
month)
• Simplified business processes helping to
achieve implementation targets like shortened
time-to-grant

10. A lot of money, but how I
coordinate investment ?
• A good mix of bottom-up and top-
down necessary
• Plan your investments starting from
ESIF (identify intervention areas, RIS3
growth drivers, intervention measures
and means)
• Stimulate potential H2020 players:
when successful, see how local H2020
beneficiaries can be further supported
inside the Operational Programmes
(avoid double funding !)

11. Synergy Patterns
• Synergy-type 1: Providing funding from alternative sources for positively evaluated Framework
Programme/Horizon 2020 proposals but not funded due to insufficient Call budgets (Seal of
Excellence)
• Synergy-type 2: Funding actions that build research and innovation capacities of actors aimed at
participating in the Framework Programme/Horizon 2020 or other internationally competitive
research and innovation programmes (sequential - upstream)
• Synergy-type 3: Funding actions that capitalise on already implemented Framework
Programme/Horizon 2020 research and innovation actions aimed at market up-take (sequential -
downstream)
• Synergy-type 4: Combining funding from the Framework Programme/Horizon 2020 and the ESIF
(and/or from other sources) for coordinated parallel actions that complement each other
• Synergy-type 5: Bringing together funding from Horizon 2020 and the ESIF in an integrated research
and innovation project that could be a single action or a group of inter-dependent actions or
operations

12. Who has to act ?
• ESIF planning authorities at national
/ regional level / Innovation agencies
monitoring / activating H2020
players / H2020 NCPs
• Go out of your confort zone and use
boundary spanners
• Your RIS3 is your blueprint !
• H2020 is your accelerator !

13. Coming together is a
beginning;
keeping together is progress;
working together is success
Henry Ford