Australia is joining Horizon Europe. Now we need to learn how to work together
Rachel Nowotnik | August 2026
In June, Australia and the European Commission concluded negotiations on Australia’s association to Pillar II of Horizon Europe. Subject to the remaining treaty process, Australian universities, research institutes and companies will be able to apply for 2027 calls under transitional arrangements from January. Successful Australian participants will be eligible for EU funding on the same basis as partners from associated countries and, importantly, they will be able to lead consortia.
Photo by Compagnons on Unsplash
There is already plenty of good advice available on eligibility, calls, budgets and consortium rules. I am more interested in what happens after the mechanics are understood: what actually happens when teams on opposite sides of the world decide they want to build something together. Two very good teams can agree completely on the research question and still struggle to work well together. The friction might appear somewhere less visible: pace, decision-making, communication, ownership, and assumptions about who is meant to do what.
In the Australian university environments I knew, working relationships were often relatively informal and direct. You picked up the phone, sorted something out, tried it, and adjusted if you needed to. Hierarchy was usually light and there was a fairly high tolerance for getting on with things before every detail had been formally settled.
A large Horizon Europe consortium can feel very different. And, of course, Europe is not one culture. A consortium may bring together universities, research institutes, SMEs, large companies and public bodies from eight or ten countries, each with its own habits and expectations. To make that workable, the project relies on formal governance, work packages, milestones, consortium agreements, reporting cycles and clearly allocated responsibilities.That structure can look slow from the outside. But when fifteen organisations are jointly responsible for a multi-million-euro project, it is also what keeps everyone moving in the same direction.
And then an eight-to-ten-hour time difference, different academic calendars, European summer holidays and a meeting window that seems to suit nobody, and the collaboration can start losing momentum without anyone quite knowing why but if teams talk early about how they will make decisions, handle disagreement, communicate between meetings and deal with delays, a surprising amount of friction disappears before it has a chance to become a problem.
Australia is not arriving as a newcomer
Australia already has a substantial Horizon Europe track record. The European Commission reports that as at June 2026 Australian organisations have participated in 239 Horizon Europe projects to date, and that nearly one in four individual applications from Australia is selected, a 24.39% success rate. So this is not a research system trying to convince Europe that it belongs in the room. Australian researchers are already there, and European partners are already choosing to work with them.
For me, one of the more interesting questions is what this means beyond universities. Pillar II is designed around global challenges and industrial competitiveness, which means companies, SMEs, research organisations, public bodies and universities working together. The strongest consortia are often the ones that can connect excellent research with validation, users, industry, standards, supply chains and a credible route to impact. That creates a genuine opportunity for Australian companies as well as universities. It also creates a reason to look carefully at European partners that bring something Australia does not already have, rather than simply adding organisations to satisfy a consortium requirement. The point is not to collect flags on a proposal. It is to build a group in which the capabilities actually fit together.
Now is a time for Australian organisations to learn how the system works from the inside, build relationships, understand which European networks matter to them and work out where they can contribute something distinctive before the next programme gets underway. There is not much value in finding the perfect scientific partner six weeks before a deadline if the teams have never worked out who can make decisions, how quickly each organisation can move, what their internal approvals look like, or whether they can actually write and deliver together. Those relationships need time. So do trust and working habits. A good consortium is not created by a matchmaking spreadsheet. It is created by people learning how to work together before the pressure of a deadline exposes every difference at once.
That is the part of Australian–European collaboration I am increasingly interested in: helping teams find the right fit, but also helping them establish the practical ways of working that allow a partnership to move when it matters.
Horizon Europe is opening a much bigger door for Australia. The opportunity is real. Making good use of it will depend not only on finding excellent science, but on getting very good at the work around the science too.
Source: European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, The European Union and Australia successfully conclude Horizon Europe negotiations, news article, 9 June 2026, research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu.
