Horizon Europe Cluster 5: Climate, Energy and Mobility

Standard Research and Innovation Actions (RIA) and Innovation Actions (IA) in Cluster 5 need at least three independent legal entities: one established in an EU Member State plus two others, each in a different Member State or associated country. The trap in the fine print: affiliated entities do not sign the grant agreement and therefore do not count towards this minimum. Three subsidiaries of one group, or two partners plus an affiliate, fails eligibility outright. Only Coordination and Support Actions (CSA) can be submitted by a single entity.

The UK has been an associated country since 1 January 2024 and participates in Cluster 5 on equal terms, including as coordinator. Switzerland's position changed recently: the EU Programmes Agreement signed on 10 November 2025 associates it retroactively from 1 January 2025, so Swiss universities, SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) and corporates are again directly fundable and may coordinate consortia in the 2026–2027 calls. Partners who drafted budgets assuming Swiss self-funding should rework them.

The adopted 2026–2027 Work Programme bars legal entities established in China from both RIAs and IAs under the batteries destination (e.g. the BATT4EU topics in calls HORIZON-CL5-2026-09 and -10). Stricter still: under the General Annex B 'restriction on control in innovation actions in critical technology areas', an entity registered in an eligible country but directly or indirectly controlled by China or by a Chinese legal entity is also ineligible — your EU-incorporated subsidiary does not launder the cap table. Chinese universities supervised by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology are excluded across the entire Work Programme.

Any non-public coordinator requesting €500,000 or more triggers a financial capacity check during grant preparation, based on audited accounts, balance sheet and profit-and-loss documents uploaded to the Participant Register. Evaluators also weigh dependency on EU funding and past deficits. A weak result can mean pre-financing paid in instalments or withheld entirely, a demand for joint-and-several liability of affiliated entities, forced replacement of the partner — or rejection of the whole proposal. Thinly capitalised startups should let a sturdier partner coordinate.

The evaluation result letter explicitly does not commit the Commission to fund you. Between invitation to grant preparation and signature sit legal entity validation, the financial capacity check, and the exclusion-grounds screen (EU administrative sanctions, insolvency, unpaid taxes and social security, professional misconduct). Separately, every proposal must include an ethics self-assessment; projects raising ethics issues undergo a formal ethics review that must clear before funding is authorised, and its conditions become binding deliverables in the grant agreement.

Cluster 5 projects must focus exclusively on civil applications. And a recurring topic-level condition: any project using satellite-based earth observation, positioning, navigation or timing data must use Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS (the EU's own systems); commercial alternatives may only supplement them. Mobility and energy-infrastructure proposals built around third-country GNSS (global navigation satellite system) data alone are non-compliant.