CFPs: Intergenerational Fairness in the context of Demographic Change in the EU

Deadline: 16-Sep-2025

The European Commission (EC) has launched the call for proposals for the Intergenerational Fairness in the context of Demographic Change in the EU.

Scope

• Demographic trends over the last decade and future projections show that the share of the population aged 65+ is growing, both in comparison to the working-age population and to the child population. This is due to an increasing life expectancy and lower fertility and poses major challenges for intergenerational fairness and affects the implicit social contract across generations.
• There is a growing need to provide an adequate framework for addressing fairness across generations (including knowledge on past generations, current and in particular future ones) related to education and labour market opportunities and outcomes, wealth accumulation and distribution of economic gains and costs, housing affordability, well-being and health, including environmental impact, role of institutions and public services, in the face of new challenges, such as ever-faster technological and climate change and changing public preferences.
  • Proposals should provide in-depth analysis of at least 3 different drivers of intergenerational inequalities such as, but not exclusively, from the ones listed above, and the interdependence between them.
  • Proposals should investigate intergenerational fairness, solidarity and trust through an intersectional lens, considering gender, family structure, racial or ethnic origin, socioeconomic and migration backgrounds.
  • Proposals may have a regional and/or national dimension.
  • Proposals may focus on developing and/or forecasting intergenerational fairness indicators.
  • Proposals may draw lessons from recent policy interventions in EU Member States in a contextual and transdisciplinary manner and propose adjustment measures or test them through social innovation experiments.
  • Proposals may focus on democratic participation and socially inclusive pathways to co-creating public values for current and future generations.

Funding Information

• The check will normally be done for the coordinator if the requested grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000, except for:
  • public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
  • cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (low value grant).

Eligible Activities

• The following activities are generally eligible for grants under Horizon Europe:
  • Research and innovation actions (RIA): Activities that aim primarily to establish new knowledge or to explore the feasibility of a new or improved technology, product, process, service or solution. This may include basic and applied research, technology development and integration, testing, demonstration and validation of a small-scale prototype in a laboratory or simulated environment.
  • Innovation actions (IA): Activities that aim directly to produce plans and arrangements or designs for new, altered or improved products, processes or services. These activities may include prototyping, testing, demonstrating, piloting, large-scale product validation and market replication.
  • Coordination and support actions (CSA): Activities that contribute to the objectives of Horizon Europe. This excludes research and innovation (R&I) activities, except those carried out under the ‘Widening participation and spreading excellence’ component of the programme (part of ‘Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area’).
  • Programme co-fund actions (CoFund): A programme of activities established or implemented by legal entities managing or funding R&I programmes, other than EU funding bodies.

Expected Outcomes

• Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:
  • Enhance the understanding and engagement on intergenerational fairness among policy makers, researchers and citizens on future trends and drivers of intergenerational fairness in the EU through quantitative and qualitative analyses;
  • Provide policy makers with scientific knowledge (including knowledge generated through SSH) and data for evidence-informed policies to address the drivers of intergenerational inequalities, tailoring interventions to diverse demographic groups, ensuring inclusivity across gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status;
  • Develop an action plan to inform policy making, including a set of viable policies to adapt the European economic and social model to reduce intergenerational imbalances and help prevent them in the future, taking into account cross-policy synergies in terms of factors influencing intergenerational fairness.

Eligibility Criteria

• Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from non-associated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call/topic.
• A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.
• Specific cases: 
  • Affiliated entities: Affiliated entities (i.e. entities with a legal or capital link to a beneficiary which participate in the action with similar rights and obligations to the beneficiaries, but which do not sign the grant agreement and therefore do not become beneficiaries themselves) are allowed, if they are eligible for participation and funding.
  • Associated partners: Associated partners (i.e. entities which participate in the action without signing the grant agreement, and without the right to charge costs or claim contributions) are allowed, subject to any specific call/topic conditions. Entities without legal personality
  • Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees to protect the EU’s financial interests equivalent to those offered by legal persons.
  • EU bodies: Legal entities created under EU law including decentralised agencies may be part of the consortium, unless provided for otherwise in their basic act.
• To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
  • the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
  • the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States:
    • Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curação (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
  • countries associated to Horizon Europe:
    • Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom.

For more information, visit EC.