Economic inequalities and their impact on democracy
Quick Facts
Email me updates on this grant
Get notified about:
- Deadline changes
- New FAQs & guidance
- Call reopened
- Q&A webinars
We'll only email you about this specific grant. Unsubscribe anytime. No spam.
Ready to Apply?
Get a personalized assessment of your eligibility and application strategy
See in 5 min if you're eligible for Economic inequalities and their impact on democracy offering max €26.0M funding💰 Funding Details
Economic Inequalities and Their Impact on Democracy – Grant at a Glance
Call Identifier: HORIZON-CL2-2025-01-DEMOCRACY-08
Type of Action: HORIZON-RIA (Lump-Sum)
Maximum EU Contribution: up to €26 million per project
Opening Date: 15 May 2025
Deadline: 16 September 2025 – 17:00 (Brussels time)
Programme: Horizon Europe – Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society (Destination: *Innovative Research on Democracy and Governance*)
What the EU Wants to Achieve
* Enhanced, intersectional understanding of how income & wealth gaps shape democratic attitudes across local, national and transnational levels.
* Evidence on citizens’ own perceptions of inequality and the knock-on effects on voter turnout, polarisation, and trust in institutions.
* Policy blueprints that bridge research and action, enabling policymakers to counter democratic erosion among economically vulnerable groups.
* Efficient exploitation of existing datasets (e.g. CESSDA, ESS, SHARE) plus new FAIR data to fill knowledge gaps.
* Novel, mixed-method approaches that reach low/no-income populations, those at risk of downward mobility, and at least three additional inequality dimensions (e.g. gender, disability, ethnicity).
Key Financial Features
* Lump-Sum Grant – the EU will fix the grant amount at the proposal stage; payments are linked to work-package completion, not to real costs.
* Co-funding rate: 100 % of eligible lump-sum budget.
* Flexibility to include partners from any eligible Horizon Europe country; additional entities from your country may be involved as associated partners without budget.
> Tip: Build a realistic lump-sum budget using the mandatory Excel table; evaluators will scrutinise cost realism even though actual reporting is simplified.
📊 At a Glance
Get Grant Updates
Get notified about:
- Deadline changes
- New FAQs & guidance
- Call reopened
- Q&A webinars
We'll only email you about this specific grant. Unsubscribe anytime. No spam.
🇪🇺 Strategic Advantages
EU-wide Advantages and Opportunities for HORIZON-CL2-2025-01-DEMOCRACY-08
1. Strategic Alignment with Core EU Agendas
- Direct link to the European Pillar of Social Rights, the EU Action Plan on Equality, and the European Democracy Action Plan. Results can feed legislative reviews (e.g. Social Pillar implementation reports, Rule-of-Law cycle) and upcoming initiatives on social convergence.
- Supports the 2023 Strategic Foresight Report by addressing erosion of trust and polarisation—key foresight “megatrends”.
- Contributes evidence for the post-2027 Cohesion Policy reform on how redistribution mechanisms affect democratic resilience.
2. Unique Added Value of Acting at EU Scale
- Natural comparative laboratory: 27 Member States + Associated Countries provide a spectrum of welfare regimes, fiscal capacities and electoral systems—enabling quasi-experimental designs impossible in a single country.
- Cross-border externalities captured: Tax competition, labour mobility and capital flows alter inequality; only an EU-wide consortium can model these transnational feedback loops.
- Critical mass & diversity: Pooling disciplinary excellence (SSH + data science) and stakeholder voices (trade unions, CSOs, regional authorities) across North-South-East-West divides enhances robustness and legitimacy of findings.
3. Premium Access to European Research Infrastructures
- CESSDA, ESS, SHARE, GESIS, EVS provide harmonised micro-data for >40 countries, cutting primary data costs and shortening time-to-impact.
- European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) & Data Spaces allow secure federation of administrative tax data or geo-tagged media datasets complying with GDPR—crucial for intersectional analyses.
- Synergy with the Democracy Research Community (CL2-2024-DEMOCRACY-01-12) creates a built-in dissemination channel and avoids duplication.
4. Multilevel Policy Uptake Mechanisms
- EU institutions: DG EMPL (minimum income), DG JUST (rule of law), DG REGIO (cohesion) can translate results into Better Regulation toolboxes.
- Council configurations & European Semester: Evidence can shape Country-Specific Recommendations on social investment and democratic participation.
- Committee of the Regions & EESC: Territorial inequality findings can feed opinions and local pilot actions.
5. Funding and Programme Synergies
- CERV & Erasmus+ can scale tested civic-engagement toolkits.
- ESF+ & European Social Fund Social Innovation+ can finance roll-out of successful policy prototypes in disadvantaged regions.
- Digital Europe & DEP offer further support for data platforms and AI-driven inequality dashboards created by the project.
6. Capacity-Building & Widening Participation
- Involvement of Widening Countries (BG, RO, EL, PT, HR, etc.) strengthens their research ecosystems and meets Horizon Europe inclusiveness targets.
- Knowledge transfer packages (Summer schools, MOOC, policy labs) foster skills in mixed-methods and FAIR data management across Europe.
7. Methodological & Technological Innovation
- Europe-wide panel survey modules can be appended to ESS Round 12, yielding immediate longitudinal comparability.
- Intersectional machine-learning models (e.g. causal forests) exploiting multilingual social-media data offer new insights into perceived inequality narratives.
- Policy-simulation sandbox (agent-based modelling at NUTS-3 level) can test redistributive scenarios before real-world implementation.
8. Long-Term Societal & Economic Impact for the Union
- Enhanced democratic resilience by identifying tipping points where inequality erodes trust—informing preventive policy.
- Lower transaction costs for Cohesion Policy through evidence-based targeting, potentially saving billions in misallocated funds.
- Strengthened EU legitimacy: Demonstrating that the Union tackles citizens’ economic anxieties can counteract Euroscepticism and extremist appeal.
9. Competitive Edge for Applicants
- Higher evaluation scores under ‘Excellence’ and ‘Impact’ by showcasing irreplaceable EU-level scope.
- Greater visibility for consortium members via integration into EU policymaking cycles, opening doors to further contracts and expert groups.
- Solid foundation for ERC, MSCA and Innovation Fund follow-ups, sustaining the research pipeline beyond the lump-sum grant.
10. Risk Mitigation Through EU Cooperation
- Data gaps in one country can be compensated by partners elsewhere, safeguarding deliverables.
- Political sensitivities diluted by multinational perspective, easing access to ministries and sensitive micro-data.
- Budgetary certainty under lump-sum model spread across a broad consortium reduces individual financial exposure.
Bottom line: Only a pan-European consortium can capture the multidimensional, cross-border dynamics between economic inequality and democracy, translate findings into viable multilevel policies, and thus maximise scientific, societal and economic returns expected by the Horizon Europe programme.
🏷️ Keywords
Ready to Apply?
Get a personalized assessment of your eligibility and application strategy
See in 5 min if you're eligible for Economic inequalities and their impact on democracy offering max €26.0M funding