Horizon Europe Mastery
Horizon Europe Mastery

Starting on 16 July 2026

Horizon Europe Proposal Writing Mastery

7-week guided group programme

Write a Competitive, Evaluator-Aligned Horizon Europe Proposal

Horizon Europe proposals are rarely unsuccessful because the idea itself is weak.
More often, the challenge lies in translating that idea into a structured, coherent and evaluator-aligned project.

A strong Horizon Europe proposal requires precision. It needs to show:

  • Why this project is the right response to the Call
  • What exactly the project aims to achieve
  • How the methodology will lead to meaningful results
  • Who will eventually use, apply or benefit from those results
  • How the results can realistically create impact
  • Why this consortium is credible to deliver the work
  • How the work plan, partner roles and budget fit together
  • Why the project is feasible within the proposed time and resources.


This programme is not about simply filling in a template. It helps you understand the architecture behind a competitive proposal and apply this logic step by step to your own proposal work.

The programme includes 7 core live teaching sessions, plus a community platform for questions and selected bonus sessions to help you apply the content to your own proposal.

By the end of the programme, you will either have developed a structured and compelling first draft of your Horizon Europe proposal Part B, or you will have the knowledge, tools and roadmap to write one in the near future.

Who This Programme Is For

This programme is for researchers, innovators and professionals from:

… who are actively preparing (or planning to prepare) a Horizon Europe proposal within the next 3–6 months.

You may be:

  • Coordinating a Horizon Europe proposal for the first time
  • Taking on a more strategic role within your consortium
  • Revising a proposal that didn’t succeed in a previous Call
  • Seeking to improve strategy and evaluator alignment in your next submission

If you are serious about submitting a competitive proposal and would value structured guidance within a supportive group setting, this programme is for you.

Building a Competitive, Evaluator-Aligned Proposal

Many proposal teams begin with important questions such as:

  • Are we interpreting the Call requirements correctly?
  • Are we clearly demonstrating progress beyond the state of the art, rather than only describing our idea?
  • Does our Impact section convincingly show how results can translate into measurable outcomes aligned with the Call’s expected impacts?
  • How detailed does the implementation section need to be?
  • How do we make sure all sections of the proposal work together?


Over the course of 7 weeks, you will develop:

  ✔  a structured draft of your Part B content
  ✔  a clearer understanding of how to align your proposal with the evaluation criteria
  ✔  a credible impact logic
  ✔  defined consortium roles and governance structures
  ✔  a realistic and justified budget
  ✔  a structured final quality control process

You move from:

“We are trying to understand what each template section expects.”

 to:

“We have a clear framework for shaping each section and keeping the proposal clear and coherent.”

The aim is to help you become the architect of your proposal, with a clear view of how all sections need to connect.

A Structured Learning Environment - With Expert and Peer Exchange

This group programme is a guided implementation programme with expert support and structured peer exchange.

You receive:

  • Weekly live sessions (Thursdays 12:00-13:30 CEST Brussels time – recordings will be available)
  • A structured drafting roadmap
  • Templates and checklists to support your writing process
  • 2 private 1:1 calls (30 minutes each)
  • Community access with responses within 24h (Mon–Fri)
  • Practical evaluator insights


Participants come from different disciplines, institutions and proposal contexts. Through the live sessions and the community space, you benefit from seeing how others approach similar questions from different angles.

Very often, someone else raises the exact question you had not yet thought to ask – but which is also relevant for your own proposal. This helps you anticipate issues earlier, strengthen your structure, and make more informed decisions as your draft develops.

You decide what you wish to share in the group setting. Sensitive or proposal-specific details can always be addressed in your private 1:1 sessions.

Meet Your Mentor

Hello, I’m Astrid, 

I help organisations secure EU funding through tailored advice and practical trainings. With more than 20 years of experience in EU funding programmes and policies, I bring deep, hands-on expertise from multiple perspectives. I’ve written successful EU grant applications myself, advised applicants as a National Contact Point for Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, and worked in an EU Executive Agency – including as moderator of expert evaluator consensus meetings.

Today, alongside my core advisory and training work, I also occasionally serve as an expert evaluator. This gives me a clear and up-to-date understanding of how proposals are assessed in practice.

Specialising in Horizon Europe grants for research and innovation, environmental sustainability, and social impact, I help organisations navigate the complexities of EU funding and maximise their proposal’s chances of success.

Having worked on different sides of the process – as applicant, advisor and evaluator – I have designed this programme to reflect how proposals are actually read, assessed and scored.

Astrid Mechel - EU Funding Consulting

Feedback from Previous Horizon Europe Workshop Participants

“Thank you for the highly insightful workshop. I greatly appreciated your strategic guidance and clear explanations. Your support in refining our proposal and targeting the right Call made a tangible difference. The interaction was engaging, and your expertise was evident throughout.”

Circular Economy Project Manager
Belgium

“Working step by step through the application process was extremely valuable. The clear explanations, practical examples and opportunity to ask questions made the complexity much easier to understand. I now feel better prepared to apply this approach in my own proposal work.”

Research Project Manager
Spain

“Astrid’s seminars were highly professional and delivered at an excellent technical level. She explains complex aspects of EU funding in a clear and practical way. After the course, I felt significantly more confident in structuring proposals and building realistic budgets.”

Social Scientist
Germany

The 7-Week Structured Roadmap

Over 7 weeks, you move through the key building blocks of a competitive Horizon Europe proposal: from Call interpretation and proposal architecture, through Excellence, Impact, Implementation, Budget and final submission readiness.

The programme is structured around one clear focus per week, so you can develop the proposal step by step. Throughout the programme, we strengthen strategy, coherence and evaluator alignment, with attention to the areas where proposals often lose points.

Each session combines expert input with dedicated time for participant questions and practical discussion.

Week 1 – Strategic Kick-Off & Proposal Architecture

Before detailed drafting begins, you build the strategic foundation of your proposal. We start by interpreting the Call topic, clarifying the core project logic, defining the coordinator’s role and mapping how the consortium should support the proposal.

This helps you understand what the Call is really asking for, how the proposal needs to be structured, and how partners should contribute to a coherent and credible project design.

Week 2 - Excellence: Objectives, Ambition and Methodology

This week focuses on on the Excellence section: clear objectives, ambition, progress beyond the state of the art and methodological robustness.

The aim is to make the project rationale clear: what the project will achieve, why the approach is credible, and how the methodology supports the expected results. 

Week 3 - Impact I: Making the Impact Pathway Specific and Credible

Many Horizon Europe proposals lose strength when the Impact section stays too broad or generic. In this week, we make the connection between your project results and the Call’s expected impacts more precise. We work on impact pathways, stakeholder engagement and beneficiary logic, so you can show who benefits from the project, how results can lead to measurable outcomes and why your proposed impact pathway is credible.

Week 4 - Impact II: Turning Results into Uptake and Long-Term Value

In this second Impact week, we focus on dissemination, exploitation, sustainability and intellectual property strategy. You will clarify how project results will be shared, used and taken forward after the funded period ends. You will be able to explain how key results will reach the right audiences, how uptake can happen in practice, what role partners play in exploitation, and how sustainability and long-term value beyond the project lifetime can be demonstrated.

Week 5 - Quality of the Implementation: Work Plan, Roles and Delivery Logic

Here, we translate the project logic into a practical and credible implementation structure. We look at how to design work packages, define tasks, deliverables, milestones, risks, governance and quality assurance so that the work plan clearly supports the objectives, methodology and expected impact.

A key focus is whether partner roles are specific, justified and aligned with the tasks they are expected to deliver. This helps show that the project is not only ambitious, but also feasible, well managed and internally consistent.

Includes a tutorial on AI-supported Gantt and PERT chart development (recorded).

Week 6 - Budget Planning: Resources, Partner Roles and Work Plan Alignment

In Week 6, we connect the budget back to the work plan and partner roles. We review eligible cost categories, person-month calculations, cost allocation across partners, budget justification and common audit sensitivities.

The aim is to help you build a budget that is realistic, credible and aligned with the actual tasks, responsibilities and level of involvement of each partner, so that the resources clearly support the proposal logic.

Week 7 - Final Quality and Coherence Check & Submission Readiness

The final week helps you step back from the proposal and assess whether it still works as one coherent project story before submission.

The session focuses on the main connections across the proposal: objectives, methodology, expected results, impact pathway, work plan, partner roles, risks and budget logic. You will learn how to spot weak links, missing connections and inconsistencies that can make a proposal fragmented, even when the individual sections seem well developed.

We also look at the most important submission-readiness checks that should not be left until the last moment, including consistency between Part A and Part B.

In the Horizon Europe Proposal Writing Mastery Programme, the goal is not to overwhelm you with more information. The goal is to give you a clear writing sequence, practical decision points and expert guidance so your proposal becomes more coherent, more credible and easier for evaluators to follow.

Bonuses

In addition to the core programme, you receive:

Bonus 1 – Extended Community Access

  • Community access remains open for one additional week after the 7-week programme, until 4 September 2026, so you can continue asking questions, exchanging with the group and clarifying points that arise as you keep refining your proposal.

Bonus 2 - Additional Concluding Live Q&A Session

  • This additional live Q&A session on 3 September 2026 gives you the opportunity to clarify follow-up questions and receive guidance on your next proposal development steps.

Bonus 3 - AI in Proposal Writing: Practical Opportunities, Limitations and Avoiding Common Mistakes

  • AI can be a useful tool in proposal writing – but it cannot fully replace strategic thinking, Call interpretation or proposal-specific judgement. In this interactive exchange session we discuss concrete examples on where AI can support drafting, structuring and refinement, where caution is needed, and how to avoid common mistakes that lead to generic, scattered, incoherent or misaligned text.

Reserve your spot

Investment

This first cohort is offered at an introductory programme fee of €1,800 (excl. VAT).

A payment plan in 2 instalments is available.

The full 7-week guided programme includes all live sessions, private 1:1 calls, community support, templates, checklists and bonuses.

If You Plan to Submit Your Horizon Europe Proposal Within the Next 3-6 Months

You can:

  1. Dedicate significant time to interpreting expectations and aligning sections internally
  2. Or follow a structured, evaluator-aligned roadmap with expert and peer support


Horizon Europe proposals require precision. This programme gives you structure, strategy, professional guidance and a collaborative environment where collective learning strengthens your own proposal.

If you intend to submit a Horizon Europe proposal in 2026, approach it with structure, alignment and expert oversight.

The programme starts on 16 July 2026. To ensure high-quality interaction and meaningful individual support, the group size for this first cohort is limited to a maximum of 10 participants.

To keep the group focused, relevant and mutually supportive, this programme is intended for people working within applicant organisations that are preparing their own Horizon Europe Pillar 2 proposal. It is not designed for service providers supporting client proposals.

Frequently Asked Questions

The live sessions take place on Thursdays between 12h00-max. 13h30 (CEST – Brussels time). The concrete dates are: 16/07, 23/07, 30/07, 06/08, 13/08, 20/08, 27/08 – plus an additional live Q&A session on 03/09.
The timing of the bonus session ‘AI in proposal writing’ will be announced in the coming weeks.

All sessions are recorded.
You can submit questions in advance or use your 1:1 sessions for clarifications.
Community responses are provided within 24 hours (Mon–Fri).

Yes. A VAT invoice can be issued for your organisation after registration. Please make sure to provide the correct billing details, including the organisation name, address and VAT number where applicable.

Yes. A certificate of attendance can be provided upon request after completion of the programme. To receive the certificate, participants should attend at least 6 of the 7 core programme’s live sessions.

You will keep your access to the platform to revisit the recordings of the modules and the other provided support materials for minimum 1 year. 

Any more questions? 

If you would like to clarify whether this programme is the right fit for your situation, feel free to send me an email at or book a short call via my calendar.

Any questions? Send a message to info[at ]eufundingconsulting.eu and I’ll get back to you asap!

PS: More thematic workshops are in preparation! If you would like to be informed when they are open, subscribe to the EU Funding News & Tips newsletter.

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