Direct, indirect and shared management

Under DIRECT management the Commission runs the call itself, designing it, evaluating it and paying out. Under INDIRECT management an executive agency or a joint undertaking runs it on the Commission's behalf, under the same rulebook: HaDEA, CINEA, REA, EISMEA, ERCEA and EACEA between them administer most of Horizon Europe, and the joint undertakings run the industry partnerships. From an applicant's seat the two are nearly identical: same portal, same forms, same model agreement, different letterhead.

Under SHARED management, national and regional authorities run the calls with EU money allocated to them in advance. This is where the structural funds sit, and it is by a wide margin the larger share of the EU budget, roughly three quarters of it.

The practical difference is where you look. Directly and indirectly managed calls are all on one portal in one language. Shared-management money is announced by your own ministry or regional development agency, in your own language, on a site nobody outside that country has heard of, often with three weeks' notice.

The rules differ in ways that matter more than the label suggests. Shared-management calls apply national procedure on top of the EU framework, add state aid conditions, and usually require co-financing from the applicant. Directly managed calls apply one uniform rulebook across all twenty-seven countries and, for research actions, can fund the full cost.

For a first-time applicant the arithmetic usually favours shared management: the competition is regional rather than continental, the forms are in your language, and the sums are appropriate to a first project. The trade-off is that the money comes with your national administration's paperwork rather than the Commission's, which is not always the easier of the two.