The European Innovation Council (EIC) has set a goal of increasing the participation of the 15 Widening countries to 15% across all EIC instruments, up from the current 8%. Widening countries are those that generally perform weaker in research and innovation.
In the context of the Horizon Europe programme (of which EIC is a part), the widening
countries are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia. These 15 widening countries account for approximately 30% of the European Union with a population of roughly 124 million.
The EIC has published a series of recommendations to help achieve this goal, including improving information about the EIC, offering specialised training, addressing biases and requiring at least 30% of the evaluators and jury members to be from Widening countries.
The EIC, funded through Horizon Europe, aims to support and fund innovation projects and has a budget of €10 billion.
