COST ASSOCIATION

Their core work

COST Association is the Brussels-based legal entity that runs COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology), a pan-European intergovernmental framework that funds open research and innovation networks known as COST Actions. They do not perform research themselves — instead, they coordinate, fund, and govern bottom-up networks where scientists, engineers, and scholars from 40+ countries collaborate on shared topics through meetings, training schools, short scientific missions, and joint dissemination. In practical terms, they are the operational backbone that lets early-career researchers and established teams across Europe (and beyond) build durable cross-border collaborations without needing a full research grant. For a business or scientist, COST is the gateway to plug into a thematic European research community quickly and cheaply.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Between 2015 and 2019, COST's H2020 work centred on consolidating the Association as the legal home of the COST framework and proving the value of pan-European bottom-up networking after a structural reform. From 2019 onwards (SGA3), the emphasis visibly shifts from 'running the instrument' to 'maximising impact' — meaning better evaluation, stronger links to industry and policy, and clearer evidence that COST Actions feed into Horizon Europe pipelines. The trajectory is one of maturing from network operator toward an impact-oriented research enabler.

COST is positioning itself as the natural pre-consortium layer for Horizon Europe, so partnering with them is a way to access early-stage, multi-country research communities before they crystallise into competitive proposals.

How they like to work

COST Association acts purely as a coordinator — both H2020 grants are 100% coordinator-led Coordination and Support Actions, with the Association as the sole legal beneficiary that then redistributes funds to thousands of researchers via COST Actions. There are no traditional consortium partners in these grants because the 'partners' are the participating countries and the Action networks themselves. Working with COST means engaging with their open call system for new Actions, not negotiating a bilateral partnership.

Although the H2020 data shows zero formal consortium partners, COST in reality connects researchers from 40+ COST Member Countries plus Near Neighbour and International Partner countries, making it one of the widest research networks in Europe. Geographic focus is genuinely pan-European with strong inclusiveness measures for widening countries.

What sets them apart

No other organisation operates a comparable bottom-up, sector-agnostic networking instrument at European scale — COST is structurally unique. Where ERA-NETs and Horizon Europe partnerships are top-down and thematic, COST lets any researcher propose a network on any topic, which makes it the cheapest and fastest route into a European scientific community. For businesses, COST Actions are an underused channel to identify emerging research clusters years before they appear in commercial Horizon Europe consortia.

Highlights from their portfolio

• COST (2015-2019 framework grant)
  At EUR 178 million it is one of the largest single CSA grants in H2020 and funded the entire COST Actions programme during the first half of the framework.
• SGA3 (COST - Maximising impact)
  The EUR 82 million continuation explicitly reorients the instrument from operations toward measurable scientific and societal impact.