If you are involved in EU-funded research and innovation — whether applying for funding, managing an active project, or submitting reports — there is one platform you cannot avoid: the EU Funding and Tenders Portal.
It is the European Commission’s central digital infrastructure for everything related to EU grants and procurement. Understanding how it works, what it contains, and how to navigate it is a practical prerequisite for any organisation engaging with Horizon Europe or any other EU funding programme.
This article explains what the Portal is, what you can do with it, and what to expect the first time you use it.
What the Portal is
The EU Funding and Tenders Portal — accessible at ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal — is the single entry point for all interactions between applicants, beneficiaries, and the European Commission across most EU funding programmes. This includes Horizon Europe, but also the European Defence Fund, Erasmus+, LIFE, and many others.
It replaced several older systems — including the Participant Portal and the legacy submission tools — and consolidates in one place everything from finding a call to signing the Grant Agreement to submitting the final report.
For organisations new to EU funding, it is the first place to go. For organisations already running projects, it is the platform through which almost all formal interactions with the Commission take place.
What you can do on the Portal
The Portal covers the full lifecycle of a funded project across several functional areas:
Finding funding opportunities
The search and filtering tools allow users to browse open calls across all EU funding programmes, filtered by programme, topic, opening and closing dates, type of action, and budget. Each call has a dedicated page with the full call documentation — the topic description, eligibility conditions, evaluation criteria, budget, and deadlines.
This is the official source for all Horizon Europe calls. Every call published in the Work Programme has a corresponding page on the Portal, with links to the full call documents and the submission system.
Registering your organisation
Before applying for any EU grant, every participating organisation must be registered on the Portal and obtain a PIC number (Participant Identification Code) — a unique nine-digit identifier that is used in all applications and grant management processes.
Registration involves submitting basic legal and financial information about the organisation. Once registered, the organisation’s data is stored in the Central Validation Service and can be reused across multiple applications without re-entering the same information each time.
Submitting proposals
Proposals for Horizon Europe projects are submitted directly through the Portal, using the online submission system. Each call has its own submission form, structured according to the Commission’s standard templates. The proposal — typically divided into a technical part and an administrative part — is uploaded and submitted through the Portal before the call deadline.
The Portal manages the submission clock strictly. A proposal that is submitted one second after the deadline is automatically rejected. This is not a guideline — it is a hard rule, enforced by the system.
Managing active grants
Once a project is funded and the Grant Agreement is signed, the Portal becomes the primary interface for grant management. This includes:
- Accessing and signing the Grant Agreement electronically
- Submitting amendments to the Grant Agreement
- Uploading deliverables and technical reports
- Submitting financial statements and periodic reports
- Communicating formally with the Project Officer
All formal actions related to an active grant — from minor notifications to major amendments — pass through the Portal. Communications outside the system (email, phone calls) do not have the same legal standing.
The Expert Database
The Portal also hosts the Expert Database, where independent experts register to participate in proposal evaluation and project reviews. For organisations interested in contributing to the Commission’s evaluation processes, this is the registration point.
Who has access and how roles work
Access to the Portal is individual — each user creates a personal EU Login account and is then associated with one or more organisations. Within each organisation’s grant portfolio, users are assigned specific roles that determine what they can see and do.
The key roles are:
LEAR (Legal Entity Appointed Representative): The person within the organisation authorised to manage the organisation’s Portal account, validate legal data, and appoint other users. Every registered organisation must have a LEAR. This role carries significant administrative responsibility and should be assigned to someone with appropriate authority and availability.
Account Administrator: Manages user access within the organisation’s Portal account.
Proposal Coordinator / Participant: The person responsible for submitting a specific proposal or managing a specific grant. Coordinators have full access to their project’s Portal area; participants have more limited access.
Understanding the role structure matters in practice. Many organisations encounter problems when a LEAR leaves the institution, or when the person responsible for a proposal submission does not have the correct role assigned in time. These issues take time to resolve and have caused missed submission deadlines.
Common difficulties with the Portal
The Portal is functional but not intuitive, particularly for first-time users. The most common practical difficulties are:
LEAR validation delays. New organisations applying for the first time must complete the LEAR validation process before they can be included in a proposal. This process involves submitting legal documents and can take several weeks. Leaving it to the last weeks before a submission deadline is a common mistake with serious consequences.
Role assignment issues. Users who have not been correctly assigned the right role for a specific proposal or grant cannot access the submission or management area. Checking and correcting role assignments well in advance of deadlines is essential.
System performance around deadlines. The Portal experiences high traffic in the days and hours before major call deadlines. Submissions attempted at the last minute may encounter slowdowns. The Commission does not accept late submissions due to technical difficulties on the user’s side — the recommendation is always to submit at least 48 hours before the deadline.
Document formatting requirements. Proposals must be submitted in specific file formats, with specific page limits, fonts, and margin requirements. Non-compliant documents are rejected. Reading the submission guidelines carefully before preparing the proposal avoids preventable problems.
How Kronis connects to the Portal
The EU Funding and Tenders Portal is where projects begin and where formal reporting takes place. Kronis provides the operational infrastructure that sits behind it — the day-to-day management of work packages, deliverables, partner coordination, and financial tracking that produces the content that gets reported through the Portal.
For teams using Kronis PMO and Kronis Finance to manage their projects, the Portal is the submission interface. Kronis is the management system that ensures what gets submitted is accurate, complete, and well-evidenced.
For organisations specifically looking for cascade funding opportunities — sub-grants distributed through active Horizon Europe projects — the Portal’s coverage is incomplete, as many cascade calls are published directly by consortia on their own platforms. A more effective starting point for cascade funding is cascadefunding.eu, which aggregates active open calls in one place, with a daily newsletter. For organisations that want to go further, the Cascade Funding Matcher uses AI to match your organisation’s profile against active calls, check eligibility, and return a ranked shortlist — in under two minutes.
Final thoughts
The EU Funding and Tenders Portal is not optional. It is the infrastructure through which every Horizon Europe application, grant agreement, and report passes. Learning to use it efficiently — and avoiding the practical pitfalls that trip up first-time users — is a basic operational requirement for any organisation engaging seriously with EU funding.
The earlier an organisation registers, validates its LEAR, and familiarises itself with the Portal’s structure, the fewer unpleasant surprises it will encounter when a deadline is approaching.
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