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New approaches for combatting corruption and other undue influences on political decision-making
Funding Program | Horizon Europe - Cluster 2 - Destination 1: Innovative research on democracy and governance | |
Call number | HORIZON-CL2-2023-DEMOCRACY-01-03 | |
deadlines | Opening 14.12.2022 | Deadline 14.03.2023 17:00 |
date - 2nd stage | Opening 16.01.2023 | |
Funding rate | 100% | |
Call budget | € 12,000,000.00 | |
Estimated EU contribution per project | between € 5,000,000.00 and € 6,000,000.00 | |
Link to the call | ec.europa.eu | |
Link to the submission | ec.europa.eu |
Call content
Call objectives | Beyond its financial and economic costs, corruption and undue influence – whether real or perceived – erodes the social contract underpinning democracies, and hence the system’s credibility and legitimacy. By undermining democracy and exacerbating inequalities, corruption and policy/state/ elite capture in general decrease the legitimacy of the democratic system and pave the way for citizen’s distrust and populist narratives. Despite abundant strategies, toolkits, approaches and indicators produced over the last two decades to win the fight against corruption, it can be argued that the practical results of anticorruption efforts have been disappointing. The problem appears resistant to solution and new / digitally enabled forms of undue influence seem to emerge. Corruption and anticorruption are about human behaviour and require therefore multifaceted and multidisciplinary research. Proposals should aim at bringing together the contributions from behavioural and political economists, psychologists and anthropologists, historians, lawyers, political scientists, communication scholars, etc. Their research findings should contribute to a deeper understanding of corruption and further the evaluation of the quality of democracy and good governance. Proposals under this topic should aim at reproducing the level of ambition, both in terms of consortium composition and the breath, range and duration of their research plan, of the FP7 collaborative project ANTICORRP. On the conceptual level, research under this topic should build a solid and encompassing understanding of (i) the cross-border character of new expressions of political corruption involving a constellation of actors cutting across the political, administrative, financial and commercial spheres; (ii) integrity and its relationship to corruption and the requirements of effective models of integrity management, both in the public and private sectors; (iii) the role played by the data analytics sector in political communication to malignly influence and disrupt politics in foreign jurisdictions; (vi) and the role played by investigative journalism in strengthening accountability by revealing transnational corruption and illicit financial flows. Studying, especially through comparative and historical research, rhetorical, linguistic and cultural aspects of corruption will help to develop a stronger theoretical ground for the critical analysis of social representations of corruption. The role of education and media, in particular social media, and their impact on how corruption is socially constructed, perceived and dealt with in the public sphere, deserves special attention. On the practical side, international cooperation is encouraged, in particular with countries from the EU Neighbourhood and accessing countries. Proposals should look at tools to strengthen public-private partnerships for fighting corruption, including inter-institutional and inter-sectorial collaborations among different stakeholders (such as small/large enterprises mentorship), or transparent guidelines for the inclusion of interest groups in political processes. Understanding the potential use of technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, encrypted data analysis, blockchain, building information modelling…) to detect, prevent and combat corruption and other undue influences should receive particular attention, without overlooking their potential misuse. The analysis of open government experiences and dissemination of practices of civic tracking systems, as opportunities of transparency and prevention of corruption, may also contribute to the assessment of the hopes and challenges of digital anti-corruption efforts. While abundant corruption indexes help to understand different angles of this problem, most of them are perception based and/or focus on particular issues. Overall overviews of corruption within the EU are difficult and proposals should aim to overcome this shortfall. Proposals are encouraged to seek synergies and collaboration whenever possible with projects funded under the topic HORIZON-CL3-2022-FCT-01-05: Effective fight against corruption. Clustering and cooperation with other selected projects under this topic and other relevant projects are strongly encouraged. read more |
Expected results |
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Regions / countries for funding | EU Member States, Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) Moldova (Moldova), Albania (Shqipëria), Armenia (Հայաստան), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosna i Hercegovina / Босна и Херцеговина), Faeroes (Føroyar / Færøerne), Georgia (საქართველო), Island (Ísland), Israel (ישראל / إِسْرَائِيل), Kosovo (Kosova/Kosovë / Косово), Montenegro (Црна Гора), Morocco (المغرب), North Macedonia (Северна Македонија), Norway (Norge), Serbia (Srbija/Сpбија), Tunisia (تونس /Tūnis), Türkiye, Ukraine (Україна), United Kingdom |
eligible entities | EU Body, Education and training institution, International organization, Natural Person, Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) / Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Other, Private institution, incl. private company (private for profit), Public Body (national, regional and local; incl. EGTCs), Research Institution incl. University, Small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) |
Mandatory partnership | Yes |
Project Partnership | To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
Only legal entities forming a consortium are eligible to participate in actions provided that the consortium includes, as beneficiaries, three legal entities independent from each other and each established in a different country as follows:
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:
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Additional information
Topics |
Demographic Change, European Citizenship, Migration, Digitalisation, Digital Society, ICT, Equal Rights, Human Rights, People with Disabilities, Social Inclusion, Justice, Safety & Security |
Relevance for EU Macro-Region | EUSAIR - EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region, EUSALP - EU Strategy for the Alpine Space, EUSBSR - EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, EUSDR - EU Strategy for the Danube Region |
UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs) |
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Additional Information | All proposals must be submitted electronically via the Funders & Tenders Portal electronic submission system (accessible via the topic page in the Search Funding & Tenders section). Paper submissions are NOT possible. Proposals must be complete and contain all parts and mandatory annexes and supporting documents, e.g. plan for the exploitation and dissemination of the results including communication activities, etc. The application form will have two parts:
Annexes and supporting documents will be directly available in the submission system and must be uploaded as PDF files (or other formats allowed by the system). The limit for a full application (Part B) is 45 pages. |
Call documents | HE-Work Programme 2023-2024, Cluster 2, Destination 1 (1125kB) |
Contact | National Contact Points for Horizon Europe Website |
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