How Horizon Europe reaches an Irish research team
Horizon Europe is directly managed. There is no Irish Managing Authority, no national envelope and no intermediate body: you apply to the Commission or one of its executive agencies, and if you win, that body signs the grant agreement with you and pays you. Irish bodies help you get there, and Enterprise Ireland also pays real money towards writing the proposal — but nobody in Ireland decides whether you are funded.
Horizon EuropeReg. (EU) 2021/695 · Model Grant Agreement€95.5bn EU-wide, directly managed — there is no Irish allocation to compete for
One programme, too many disconnected records. Delivery notes, partner decisions, expenditure, results and reporting evidence often sit in different places.
How the money reaches an organisation
Every level here can be asked for its own process map. That is the point of yours.
European Commission — DG Research and Innovation
Sets the work programme and the calls under Reg. (EU) 2021/695. €95.5bn across the EU for 2021–2027, awarded on proposal quality in open competition — not shared out by country.
The granting authority — the Commission service or executive agency that signs your grant
European Research Council Executive Agency, Research Executive Agency, European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency, Health and Digital, Climate Infrastructure and Environment. The one that ran your call is the one that signs, pays, reviews and can audit you.
Enterprise Ireland — national support network and proposal funding
Leads Ireland’s Horizon Europe support network and hosts the National Contact Points. It has no say in whether your proposal succeeds, but it does pay towards writing one: coordinator support of up to €12,500 including VAT for a researcher in an Irish higher-education or publicly funded body, and support for work-package leaders, travel and ERC preparation. Check the current amounts before you budget.
👉 Your organisation sits at this level
Your organisation — a beneficiary on the grant agreement
Signs the grant agreement directly with the granting authority, keeps timesheets and cost records, reports at the end of each reporting period, and holds the records for five years after the final payment — three years for grants of not more than €60,000.
Everyone the research is for
Patients, industry, other researchers and the public who get the results. Horizon requires open access to publications, so the output is meant to travel beyond the consortium.
Audit Chain
Built upward from your own records. Your accounts, timesheets and supporting documents → your periodic report and financial statement, with a Certificate on the Financial Statements at final payment where your requested EU contribution reaches €430,000, or €725,000 if you hold a systems-and-process audit → the granting authority runs project reviews, checks and audits under the Model Grant Agreement, and you get a draft audit report to comment on before it is finalised → findings can be extended to your other grants. Alongside, not above: the European Court of Auditors audits the EU budget, and OLAF and the European Public Prosecutor investigate suspected fraud. There is no Irish audit authority in this chain — the certificate is a document you buy, not a tier above you.
Process maps under this programme
Where this came from
Human reviewed2026-09-08Automatically checkedMonitoring pendingCurrent source statusAutomatic monitoring pending
- Regulation (EU) 2021/695 establishing Horizon Europe — Official Journal of the European UnionA · Governing source checkedAuto: pending
- Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement — Art. 20 record keeping, Art. 24 the Certificate on the Financial Statements, Art. 25 checks, reviews and audits — European CommissionA · Governing source checkedAuto: pending
- Horizon Europe supports for Irish applicants — coordinator support and proposal preparation funding — Enterprise IrelandB · Official operational guidance checkedAuto: pending
Read against the source on 2026-09-08. This is the human-reviewed version.
What that check changed: First source register, 8 September 2026. Until today this entry carried no sources at all: the budget, the executive agencies, the audit threshold and the whole control chain were asserted in the same visual frame as entries with dated, graded registers. Three things were also wrong. The audit chain ran downward from the European Court of Auditors with OLAF and the European Public Prosecutor as tiers — the same error corrected in ERDF, SICAP, AMIF and Erasmus+ — and it treated the Certificate on the Financial Statements as a tier of oversight when it is a document the beneficiary buys. The certificate threshold read €325,000, which is the Horizon 2020 figure; in Horizon Europe it is €430,000 of requested EU contribution, or €725,000 for a beneficiary holding a systems-and-process audit. And Irish support bodies were described as advisory only, when Enterprise Ireland also pays towards writing a proposal — up to €12,500 including VAT for a coordinator in an Irish higher-education or publicly funded body. The entry’s central claim was right and is kept: Horizon Europe is directly managed, so there is no Irish Managing Authority and no national allocation.