FINANCE WATCH AISBL

Their core work

Finance Watch is a Brussels-based European public interest NGO dedicated to financial regulation advocacy. Founded in 2011 as a counterweight to financial industry lobbying, they analyze proposed EU financial rules and push for regulations that protect citizens and the stability of the financial system rather than incumbent financial actors. In H2020, they contributed their regulatory expertise and civil society perspective to research projects examining distributed financial systems and EU governance legitimacy — roles that reflect their core mission of connecting academic research on financial systems with the realities of democratic policy-making. They are not a research institute; their value to consortia is as a policy-literate civil society voice that can translate research findings into regulatory arguments.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Both H2020 projects began in 2015 and ran through 2018, so Finance Watch's entire H2020 record falls within a single cohort — there is no temporal evolution to analyze. No keyword metadata is available to detect any thematic shift within this period. What can be said is that their two projects span two distinct but related concerns: the technical architecture of financial systems (DOLFINS, FET pillar) and the political legitimacy of EU financial governance (ENLIGHTEN, Society pillar), suggesting a breadth of engagement across both the systemic and the democratic dimensions of finance.

With both projects concentrated in a single 2015 start year and no H2020 activity since, it is unclear whether Finance Watch continued pursuing EU research funding after 2015 — future collaborators should verify their current engagement with Horizon Europe before assuming continuity.

How they like to work

Finance Watch has never coordinated an H2020 project — both participations were as a consortium partner. With 23 unique partners across 11 countries spread across just two projects, they have joined relatively large, multi-partner consortia rather than small bilateral collaborations. This pattern is consistent with an NGO that adds legitimacy, dissemination reach, and policy-translation capacity to academic-led research projects, rather than driving the scientific agenda itself.

Finance Watch has collaborated with 23 distinct organizations across 11 countries through just two projects, suggesting they entered well-connected international consortia rather than niche bilateral partnerships. Their Brussels base positions them naturally within the European policy and advocacy network.

What sets them apart

Finance Watch is one of a very small number of civil society organizations with credible EU-level financial regulation expertise that has participated in H2020 research. For a consortium studying financial systems, governance, or fintech policy, they offer something most academic or industry partners cannot: direct access to EU regulatory processes, a public-interest framing that strengthens societal impact sections, and a non-commercial voice. Researchers building proposals that touch financial regulation, democratic governance of markets, or the societal consequences of financial innovation would find Finance Watch a rare and valuable non-academic partner.

Highlights from their portfolio

• DOLFINS
  The larger of the two projects (EUR 250,000) and placed under the Future and Emerging Technologies pillar, signaling that Finance Watch engaged with genuinely experimental thinking about how distributed financial architectures could be redesigned for societal benefit.
• ENLIGHTEN
  Though smaller in budget (EUR 40,602), this project directly addressed EU political legitimacy during economic crises — the most direct alignment with Finance Watch's advocacy mission and their strongest claim to policy-relevant expertise.