European Partnerships

European Partnerships

European Partnerships create a platform for strengthened and structured collaboration and knowledge exchange between various actors in the European R&I system and enhanced coordination of strategic research agendas and/or R&I funding programmes. They are based on agreed objectives and a long-term vision, underpinned by Strategic Research and Innovation Agendas (SRIAs) to which all partners in the partnership commit. This is a key feature that distinguishes European Partnerships from other collaborative research instruments. Partnerships also enhance cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration and integration of value chains and ecosystems, improving integration of sectoral R&I policies, notably through more systematic and extended reach and engagement of stakeholders such as end-users and public authorities.

In Horizon Europe, there are three different implementation modes for European Partnerships.

Co-funded

  • Co-funding of joint programmes of R&I activities between R&I funders. They are based on a Horizon Europe Grant Agreement signed by the Commission and a consortium of partners, generally composed of R&I funders and other public authorities. 

Institutionalised partnerships

  • Joint Undertakings (JUs): long-term collaborations with private (sometimes also public) partners requiring a high degree of integration. 
  • Article 185 initiatives: long-term collaborations with public partners requiring a high degree of integration. 
  • European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) – Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs): Europe-wide innovation ecosystems that integrate education, research and entrepreneurship. They are established in compliance with the EIT regulation and the EIT strategic Innovation Agenda.

Co-programmed

  • Joint programming of R&I activities and mobilisation of additional activities by partners in line with the objectives of the partnership. They are based on a Memorandum of Understanding, generally with industry associations. The EU contribution is implemented through the Horizon Europe mechanisms (work programmes and their calls for proposals), and matching partners’ contributions are implemented under their responsibility.

The main differences between these forms of European Partnership are in their preparation and how they function, as well as in the overall impact they can trigger. The Co-funded and Co-programmed Partnerships are linked to the strategic plan and the Horizon Europe work programmes. Article 185 and JU Institutionalised Partnerships require the adoption of separate legislation and are subject to an ex-ante impact assessment. 

European Partnerships are established only if there is evidence that they will support the achievement of EU policy objectives more effectively than other Horizon Europe actions.

The Horizon Europe strategic plan 2025-2027 includes a list of new candidate Co-Funded and Co-programmed European Partnerships to be launched during the second half of Horizon Europe.

 

Participation of Spain

Spain currently participates in all of the European Partnerships, demonstrating the country’s global interest and commitment in all thematic areas. Spain's participation is carried out through different national (AEI, CEDTI, ISCIII, etc.) and regional funding agencies (Innobasque, SPRI, etc.) depending on the thematic area.

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Source: European Commission

European Partnership's projects

LIHLITH: Learning to interact with humans by lifelong interaction with humans

Specific programme: European Coordinated Research on Long-term Challenges in Information and Communication Sciences & Technologies ERA-NET (CHIST ERA)
UPV/EHU Partner Status: Partner
UPV/EHU PI: Eneko Agirre
Project start: 01/12/2017
Project end:   30/09/2020

Brief description:  A Lifelong Learning system learns different tasks sequentially, over time, getting better at solving future related tasks based on experience. LIHLITH will focus on human-computer dialogue, where each dialogue experience is used by the system to learn to better interact, based on the success (or failure) of previous interactions. The key insight is that the dialogue will be designed to produce a reward, allowing the chatbot system to know whether the interaction was successful or not. The reward will be used to train the domain and dialogue management modules of the chatbot, improving the performance, and reducing the development cost, both on a single target domain but specially when moving to new domains.

The research will be evaluated by publicly available benchmarks to allow comparison with other approaches in the state of the art. When possible, systems will participate in international comparative/competitive evaluations such as WOCHAT or SemEval. LIHLITH project will also develop and deliver evaluation protocols and benchmarks to allow public comparison and reproducibility based on crowdsourcing.

LIHLITH will rely on recent advance in multiple research disciplines, including, natural language processing, knowledge induction, reinforcement learning, deep learning, and lifelong learning.