Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

1.3.1 Austria’s performance in Horizon 2020
The data used for the analyses that follow are based 
on the reporting date of 1 March 2020; they were 
provided by the European Commission via eCORDA, 
and prepared by the Austrian Research Promotion 
Agency (FFG). Overall the current data confirm once 
again the positive achievements of Austrian institu-
Fig. 1-30: Radar chart showing evaluated indicators relative to the highest value amongst the EU-28*
Patent intensity
Scientific articles
Scientific articles 
(engineering + computing)
Availability of ICT
Use of ICT
Online creativity
Degrees in tertiary studies
STEM & ICT
Social mobility
Economic complexity
Knowledge-intensive tasks
Inter-company collaboration
Cooperation with other companies
Cooperation with 
higher education institutions
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
AUT
* Austria’s score relative to the highest value in the EU-28, and percentage shares. The outer edge of the radar chart represents the highest value 
amongst the EU-28 in each case. 
Note: RTI indicators are marked in red, digitalisation indicators in blue and innovation capability indicators in grey.
Source: Graphic: iit.

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58
Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020
tions and researchers from science and industry un-
der the current (eighth) EU Framework Programme 
for Research, Horizon 2020. Since the current pro-
gramme period concludes at the end of 2020, these 
data also allow at least a provisional overall evalua-
tion of Austria’s participation in Horizon 2020. The 
total amount of project funding allocated to Austria 
has now reached €1.46 billion.
Austria’s 3,571 participations constitute a 2.9% 
share of the overall total of 123,701 participations in 
funded Horizon 2020 projects. This places Austria in 
eleventh position in international rankings, just be-
hind Switzerland (3,641) and ahead of Denmark 
(2,931). Naturally enough the larger European coun-
tries have the highest numbers of participations in 
absolute terms: Germany (14,758), United Kingdom 
(13,304), Spain (12,568) and Italy (11,255). 
The proportion of funding approvals received by 
Austria from the Horizon 2020 budget stands at 
2.8%, approximately parallel with the share of partic-
ipations. The proportion of Austrian project coordina-
tors amongst all coordinators is 2.6% (in absolute 
figures a total of 735), with Austrian universities tak-
ing comparatively few coordinating roles.
With a success ratio of 18.2% in terms of participa-
tions, Austria ranks significantly above the average 
success ratio of 15.7% for Horizon 2020, and second 
only to Belgium (19.2%) amongst the member states 
of the European Union.
61
The involvement of Austrian participants in indi-
vidual “pillars” and their subdivisions (see Table 1-12) 
varies greatly according to their nature. From the 
budgetary perspective, the major programme areas 
(“pillars“) of “Societal Challenges”, “Excellent Sci-
ence” and “Industrial Leadership” are the most signif-
icant. In this respect the largest amount of funding 
was acquired for Austria under Pillar III, “Societal 
Challenges”, amounting to €564.5 million. The Austri-
an share under Pillar III represents 2.8% of all budget-
ary support for projects under this pillar. In Pillar I, 
“Excellent Science”, €482.6 million was allocated to 
61 For comparison: The success ratio for Swiss participations is 18.2%, and for US participations 18.6%.
researchers based in Austria, corresponding to a 
2.6% share in this pillar. In Pillar II, “Industrial Leader-
ship”, €370.5 million was allocated to Austria: a 3.3% 
share of the budget, i.e. above-average representa-
tion of this pillar in Austria, in contrast to the other 
two pillars. With a 2.3% share of participations and 
2.3% of coordinations, Austrian contributions to the 
“Excellent Science” pillar are significantly below the 
averages for Austria under Horizon 2020, which 
stand at 2.9% and 2.6% respectively. The Austrian 
shares in the other two pillars are above average by 
a similar amount: “Industrial Leadership” (3.5% and 
2.9%) and “Societal Challenges” (3.0% in both re-
gards). Austria’s performance in the programme line 
“Science with and for society” is significantly above 
average: here the proportion of Austrian coordina-
tions is 11.0%, the proportion of funding acquired is 
7.2% and the share of project participations is 6.1%. 
However, it should be noted that this programme line 
only has a small amount of budgeted funding (only 
0.7% of the total funding is allocated to this pro-
gramme line). Austrian participation is particularly 
low in the similarly modest funding areas of 
“Cross-cutting issues” (1.8% of all participations and 
1.1% of all coordinations) and EURATOM (0.8% of all