Why You May Be the Only Person Who Thinks Your EU Proposal Deserves 15/15

Somebody in your consortium believes this proposal is a 15.

They may be right about the project. They are almost certainly wrong about the document.

Confirmation bias is a feature of commitment

You chose this idea. You recruited partners, defended it in meetings and spent evenings refining it. That investment is necessary. It also makes you see evidence for your idea more readily than evidence against it.

Attachment does not make the team careless. It makes the team selective. Strengths feel obvious; weaknesses feel minor or already addressed.

And the bar is high. In Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Actions, Innovation Actions and Coordination and Support Actions, three criteria are each scored out of 5, so 15 is the maximum evaluation score for single-stage and second-stage proposals. A 5 on a criterion means the proposal successfully addresses all relevant aspects of it, and any shortcomings are minor.

What you know versus what the page shows

The team knows that the pilot partner is reliable, that the method worked in an earlier project and that users asked for this solution. If the proposal does not state and evidence those facts, the evaluator does not know them.

Evaluators cannot credit what is in your head, your corridor conversations or your partner’s reputation unless it reaches the page.

A hypothetical example. A team rates its Impact section as a clear 5. The concept is strong and the need is real. But the proposal names no specific users, gives no baselines for its indicators and does not say which partner owns exploitation. An evaluator might reasonably see a good idea with significant shortcomings in how its impact is evidenced. Team and evaluator are reading the same document with different knowledge.

An AI-generated score is not a forecast

It is now easy to ask an AI tool to score a proposal. The result can be helpful as a structured challenge, especially when it cites specific weaknesses.

But a score from any pre-evaluation, human or AI, is not a reliable forecast of an official result. Official evaluators bring their own expertise and judgement. They score independently and then agree to a consensus. Funding then depends on ranking against other proposals and the available budget. Independent reviewers also disagree with each other, and no pre-evaluation can predict the final outcome with certainty.

Use findings as a challenge list. Treat any number as a prompt for questions, never a promise.

A promising concept needs a justified proposal

A promising concept answers the question “Is this worth doing?” A fully justified proposal also answers “Will it work? Can this consortium deliver it? Who will use the results? How will we know?”

Most teams are confident about the first question. Most of the evaluation criteria are about the other four.

Supportive colleagues need sharper questions

Colleagues who read a draft usually want to help. They focus on what is good, soften what is weak and assume the gaps will be filled. Kindness is valuable in a team, but it rarely finds the missing half-point.

“What do you think?” invites reassurance. Ask instead:

• For each criterion, what are the reasons it would fall short of an excellent assessment?
• Which three sentences would you quote back at us in a consensus meeting?
• Which expected outcomes of the topic are weakly addressed or missing?
• What is the single strongest reason this proposal should not be funded?

Anyone who cannot answer the last question has not read it critically.

The hard truth. Belief is what gets a proposal written. Evidence on the page is what gets it scored.

Before submission, put the proposal in front of someone with no stake in it. EUevaluator (https://www.euevaluator.com), run by Copenhagen Performance, offers an independent, simulated pre-submission evaluation that challenges your proposal against the marking scheme for your type of action. It is not a European Commission service and cannot promise a particular score. What it can do is ask the questions your team has stopped asking.