Press article - Opportunities for advisors under Horizon Europe

Horizon Europe, the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation, includes regular calls to set up EU-wide advisory networks. COREnet was the first such network, launched in 2022. Over the next two years, there are five more of these advisory network calls on different topics. Applying to this type of call can be challenging, but there are many useful support tools and information sources available. Patrick Pasgang from the Innovation Support Center of Boerenbond Belgium (Innovatiesteunpunt), one of the partners of COREnet shared his experience and a few useful tips.

The advisory networks call is part of Horizon Europe’s cluster 6 on “Food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and environment.” The overall objective of this call is to foster exchanges between advisors across all EU Member States in order to facilitate the synthesis and sharing of knowledge, capacity building, as well as identifying innovative solutions and bringing them into practice more quickly. The five calls for advisory networks for 2023-2024 focus on: organic agriculture, reducing the use of pesticides, optimal fertiliser use, forestry and sustainable livestock systems.

COREnet is a successful project from the 2021 edition of the call. It is the EU advisory network on ‘consumer-producer chains’ to facilitate, through advisory systems, the transition towards more inclusive, resilient and sustainable food systems.

The calls for EU advisory networks state that the multi-actor approach is essential and the majority of project partners should be farm advisors with solid field experience. The COREnet project ensured that they could respond to this requirement by involving 14 different organisations, two thirds of which are relevant advisory and training services, and the Calls Horizon Europe others include a communication service, a consumer organisation and research centre. Patrick explains “It is also ideal to have all Member States represented in the project, even if they are not formal partners from the start, for example, in COREnet we have a dedicated budget for the involvement of other organisations during the project lifetime.”

The deadline for the Horizon Europe call for EU advisory networks on organic, pesticides, fertilisers is 23 March 2023, for the networks on forestry, livestock systems, the deadline is 28 Feb 2024.