The Horizon Europe NCP Coordination Office is being established. Let us unpack these three words: who the NCPs are, why coordination among them is needed, and how the establishment of an office represents a step forward. We discussed these questions with the coordinator of the Hungarian Horizon Europe National Contact Point (NCP) network, Dóra Fekete Pivarcsiné, and the Head of the Department for International Cooperation, Dr Borbála Schenk.

Who are the Horizon Europe NCPs?

Borbála Schenk: Horizon Europe is the European Union’s most significant research and innovation framework programme to date. Similar to other countries, it opens up opportunities for Hungarian stakeholders – including research organisations, innovative companies, experienced professional organisations, public institutions, hospitals, municipalities and even individual researchers – to participate in European research and innovation cooperation projects, either as partners or as project leaders. With a budget of nearly EUR 100 billion over seven years, the framework programme offers several hundred calls for proposals every year in some of the most exciting areas of European research, ranging from autonomous vehicles and innovative medical research to artificial intelligence. These represent tremendous opportunities; however, without the appropriate experience and routine, navigating them is not easy. For this reason, every EU Member State and associated country has committed to establishing its own network of National Contact Points (NCPs) to support participation. The expert staff of these networks play a key role in enhancing applicants’ chances of success. In Hungary, this task has been carried out by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NRDI Office) for more than ten years.

Dóra Pivarcsiné Fekete: The main task of the NCPs is to provide, free-of-charge, professional support, including up-to-date information, advice, tailored consultations and other services, to potential applicants, in line with the structure of Horizon Europe and linked to the individual subprogrammes, partnerships and missions. The NCP team, coordinated by the Department for International Cooperation of the NRDI Office, consists of well-established, experienced EU experts and proposal specialists. Our aim is to ensure that Hungarian stakeholders become familiar with and fully understand the opportunities offered by the Horizon Europe programme. Using the tools at our disposal, we also support the visibility of Hungarian applicants on the international competence market, as this is key to enabling them to join European consortia.

The calls of the Horizon Europe framework programme are publicly available and accessible to everyone. Why is there a need for specialist experts to support applicants in the application process?

Dóra Pivarcsiné Fekete: Our expert team has unique insight into the functioning, logic and current trends of the Horizon Europe framework programme. Moreover, we do not only assist applicants in navigating the calls of Horizon Europe, but also provide reliable information on related national funding schemes; this way, helping applicants put together tailored application strategies.

Borbála Schenk: Reliable information is key, as the Horizon Europe framework programme has its own logic and language. Within their respective fields of expertise, NCPs act as intermediaries: they are both “guides” and “interpreters”, building a bridge between excellent Hungarian ideas, knowledge and expertise and successful participation in European funding programmes. Our in-house experts, complemented by colleagues from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) who perform NCP tasks for the European Research Council (ERC) calls, all have several years of international experience, a thorough understanding of the operation of the Horizon Europe programme, and extensive national and international professional networks.

With the support of the EDIOP project, the Horizon Europe NCP Coordination Office has therefore been established. In what ways will this bring progress?

Borbála Schenk: Based on many years of practice and international experience, by now the essential professional and organisational frameworks required for carrying out NCP activities have been established. These provide a coherent system for the work of the NCPs and define shared objectives and expected results. The establishment of the Office, supported by the EDIOP project, allows us to place this work within a strategic framework and to introduce new approaches that enable us to adapt flexibly to the increasingly rapid changes of both ongoing and future European research and innovation programmes.

Dóra Pivarcsiné Fekete: The Office coordinates the NCPs’ day-to-day activities and cooperation, while also providing a platform for sharing international experience, good practices and challenges. This allows us to continuously improve the services we provide to Hungarian researchers and innovators. We have developed an NCP network development concept, and the collection and analysis of the NCPs’ international experience has begun, with a particular focus on those areas that are most important for professional development. We also process and analyse data and trends related to Hungary’s participation in Horizon Europe, which provide a basis for international comparison. It is important to highlight that the service-oriented approach of the NCPs has been further strengthened, with an even greater focus on applicants’ needs. The identification of target groups has also begun, with the aim of making our proposal preparation activities more targeted and more tailored, and of enabling applicants to more easily identify the calls most relevant to them – including those spanning multiple thematic areas.

Borbála Schenk: Our communication activities have also been renewed in this spirit. Our weekly newsletters, published regularly for the past two years, as well as our weekly Horizon Friday 10 webinars, have already attracted significant interest. In February 2026, we will launch our dedicated, applicant-centred Horizon Europe information website. In addition, we are actively present on LinkedIn, with both Hungarian- and English-language profiles. Our Horizon Europe NCP Hungary LinkedIn page has played a key role in the significant progress achieved in recent months in reaching both the national and international applicant communities, showcasing Hungarian excellence at international level, and promoting the services and innovative initiatives of the Hungarian NCP network. And this is not the end of the story: according to our plans, in 2026 we will open additional new communication channels to make our professional content accessible and engaging for an even wider audience.

Contact:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizont-europa-program-magyarorszag/?viewAsMember=true
• Web: https://www.horizonteuropa.nkfih.gov.hu/
• E-mail: ncp@nkfih.gov.hu

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The interview was made and the NCP Coordination Office were set up as part of the professional programme of the European Union project entitled “Development of the RDI ecosystem” (project ID: GINOP_PLUSZ-2.1.2-22-2024-00002).