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Call key data
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
Deadline - 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
Link to the submission
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.
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Expected results
- Increased knowledge and data on political corruption and other undue influences on policymaking and policy implementation, and on how these impact the understanding of democracy and rule of law and the adherence of citizens to those values.
- Advance knowledge on the use of technologies (including AI, blockchain, encrypted data analysis...) to prevent and detect corruption and other undue political influence in the EU and its neighbourhood.
- Reinforce national and EU legislative tools for preventing and fighting corruption, so as to bridge the gap between a fertile corruption measurement landscape and the different levels of commitment shown by governments to the prevention of and fight against corruption.
Eligibility Criteria
Regions / countries for funding
Moldova (Moldova), Albania (Shqipëria), Armenia (Հայաստան), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosna i Hercegovina / Босна и Херцеговина), Faeroes (Føroyar / Færøerne), Georgia (საქართველო), Iceland (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:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States
- third countries associated to Horizon Europe - see list of particpating 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:
- at least one independent legal entity established in a Member State; and
- at least two other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries.
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 conditions regarding associated partners set out in the specific call 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.
- Joint Research Centre (‘JRC’)— Where provided for in the specific call conditions, applicants may include in their proposals the possible contribution of the JRC but the JRC will not participate in the preparation and submission of the proposal. Applicants will indicate the contribution that the JRC could bring to the project based on the scope of the topic text. After the evaluation process, the JRC and the consortium selected for funding may come to an agreement on the specific terms of the participation of the JRC. If an agreement is found, the JRC may accede to the grant agreement as beneficiary requesting zero funding or participate as an associated partner, and would accede to the consortium as a member.
- Associations and interest groupings — Entities composed of members (e.g. European research infrastructure consortia (ERICs)) may participate as ‘sole beneficiaries’ or ‘beneficiaries without legal personality’. However, if the action is in practice implemented by the individual members, those members should also participate (either as beneficiaries or as affiliated entities, otherwise their costs will NOT be eligible
Additional information
Topics
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)
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:
- Part A (to be filled in directly online) contains administrative information about the applicant organisations (future coordinator and beneficiaries and affiliated entities), the summarised budget for the proposal and call-specific questions;
- Part B (to be downloaded from the Portal submission system, completed and then assembled and re-uploaded as a PDF in the system) contains the technical description of the project.
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 1HE-Work Programme 2023-2024, Cluster 2, Destination 1(1125kB)
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