Directly managed programmes are administered by the European Commission and its executive agencies without the involvement of national authorities. They include, for example, Horizon Europe, Creative Europe, LIFE, Digital Europe and the Connecting Europe Facility. They differ in several key respects: applications are submitted in English through a shared European portal, applicants compete with others from across the whole Union, most calls require an international consortium, and evaluation is carried out by independent experts outside Slovakia. The success rate tends to be lower than for national calls, but the budgets are higher and the conditions are often more flexible. For Slovak entities, the most viable route is to join a project as a partner in a consortium led by an experienced foreign organisation, and only later to take on coordination themselves.
See also: Shared management, Consortium in a European project.
