Deadline: 16-Sep-2025
The European Commission (EC) has launched the Autocratic Appeal: Nature, Drivers and Strategies Programme.
Scope
- Particularly striking, among those strategies to distract from persistent authoritarian practices, is the adoption of gender-equality reforms by some autocracies to boost their international image. While increased autocracy and anti-democratic tendencies go hand in hand with the global setback on gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights, proposals should not overlook the causes and consequences of autocracies’ pursuit of gender equality. This will shed light on the overall patterns and drivers of autocracies in the twenty-first century.
- The resistance against autocratisation tendencies has also moved into the digital realm, in order to counteract the “digital authoritarianism” to which authoritarian and authoritarian-leaning leaders have resorted to. In the digital age, authoritarian power is built and sustained in transnational and globalized configurations that involve state and non-state actors, cutting across regime types. Via online censorship, internet shutdowns, digital surveillance and online disinformation and information manipulation, aspiring autocrats try to silence and disable access to information. Proposals should aim at disentangling the actor configurations engaged in digital authoritarian practices and investigate how these practices fit within the larger authoritarian playbook. In parallel, they should also focus on the challenges brought by resistance to digital authoritarianism, such as protests and investigative research and advocacy, enriching the analysis of the resistance playbook.
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:
- Policymakers, public authorities and citizens at large are equipped with updated and exploitable scientific knowledge (including through SSH disciplines and fields) and understanding of the increasing autocratic tendencies, also in established democracies, including digital authoritarianism and erosion of human rights, as well as of the factors contributing to the rise of these tendencies (including the spread of disinformation in the public sphere, public disparagement of the rule of law, excessive use of police force, demonization of political opposition).
- Public authorities, journalists and publics alike are provided with methods and tools capable of a) early warning and characterisation of autocratic tendencies, their drivers and strategies; and b) identifying tactics for resisting and combating them.
- Relevant actors (democratic governments, media, civil society organisations) are enabled to take more informed decisions when engaging and dealing with autocracies.
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.