The Partial association agreement of Switzerland to Horizon 2020

The Swiss Confederation, the European Commission and the Council of the EU singed the partial association agreement of Switzerland to Horizon 2020. This agreement enters into force retroactively as of Monday, 15th September 2014.

The partial association means that researchers based in Switzerland are considered:

- as coming from an ASSOCIATED COUNTRY to Horizon 2020 for activities within Priority 1 (Excellent Science), ‘Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation’ and the Euratom and ITER parts of Horizon 2020. Switzerland will contribute financially to these parts of the programme (pro rata temporis) according to the usual GDP-based formulas.

- as coming from an INDUSTRIALISED THIRD COUNTRY to Horizon 2020 for activities within all other parts of Horizon 2020 (mainly Priorities 2 and 3). As announced below already in June, Switzerland has confirmed that it will give direct funding to Swiss-based researchers in multi-beneficiary projects who cannot receive funding from the European Commission. We thus encourage partners from other European countries to step into consortia led by Swiss institutions and to take Swiss partners into their consortia!

This solution is guaranteed until the end of 2016 and its follow up will depend on a future agreement between Switzerland and the European Union on the free movement of persons.

More information can be found:

- Council press release on partial association at
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/intm/146048.pdf  

- Factsheet of the Swiss government on Swiss participation in Horizon 2020 at
http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/index.html?lang=endownload=NHzLpZeg7t,lnp6I0NTU042l2Z6ln1ad1IZn4Z2qZpnO2Yuq2Z6gpJCEdYN9gWym162epYbg2c_JjKbNoKSn6A--

-  European Commission’s participants’ portal at
http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/other/hi/h2020-hi-swiss-part_en.pdf   

-  Submission of funding requests’ by Swiss partners as ‘industrialised third country’ participants at
http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/h2020/02457/index.html?lang=en