Update: Due to the Covid-19 crisis and overwhelming requests from the community calling for deadline lenience, the European Commission announced that the deadline for the Horizon 2020 health-related calls has been postponed.
SC1-2020 is postponed to 4 June 2020 and, in addition, the deadlines of H2020-SC1-DTH-2020 and H2020-SC1-FA-DTS-2020 will be also extended to 18 June 2020.
The measures introduced by many EU countries to face the pandemic have heavily affected the work of the brain research community, as well as the broader researcher community across Europe, making it extremely difficult to contribute to the development of high-quality proposals.
The European Brain Council (EBC), together with its member societies the European Federation of Neurological Associations (EFNA), the Global Alliance of Mental Illness Advocacy Networks-Europe (GAMIAN-Europe), the European Academy of Neurology (EAN), the European Association of Neurosurgical Societies (EANS), the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP), the European Psychiatric Association (EPA), the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) and the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) addressed an open letter to the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation requesting to postpone the current deadline of all open Horizon 2020 calls by at least 2 months due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.
The brain research community is, unfortunately, severely affected by the outbreak of COVID-19 in Europe as well as by the containment measures introduced by many EU countries. EBC fully understands the necessity of the various measures, as strong action is needed to halt the spread of the virus. However, as an unintended result of these steps, researchers are currently hindered in their efforts to collaborate with partners in other EU-countries, travel across Europe, organize meetings, gather relevant experts and conduct background research as to the topics of the calls.
Given the extraordinary circumstances and bearing in mind that robust cooperation amongst research communities is a requisite for developing good-quality proposals, EBC and its member societies urge the European Commission to strongly consider extending the April 15 deadline by at least 2 months. Such action will enable research communities to better mitigate the unforeseen impact of the containment measures on their work and, ultimately, ensure the launch of robust projects that will further reinforce the impact of EU research funding on European society.
The full letter can be read here:
H2020 Extension Request Letter