The complexity of the overwhelmingly large EU funding system is massive. In spite of standardization measures over the years and efforts to make funding more accessible from the EU Commission, the system has grown so big that it has proven almost impossible to make a make it simpler to apply for funding. It seems when one big measure from the EU Commission to simplify and standardize has been implemented, another bureaucratic or practical issue grows larger and makes the overall experience from the beneficiaries more or less the same – complex and challenging to approach.

The issues are manyfold: Rules for application, budget rules, submission systems, the lingo, the problems of identifying the right funding box, the unspoken rules that you need to know and of course the often absolute necessity for paying an external consultant in order to deal with all this.

This is a big topic to chew down – even in a long podcast format like The Grant. Maxence Viallon, Grant Finance Officer at EIT Urban Mobility, has an opinion about this subject and makes an effort through his blog ‘EU funds – Simply explained’ to grow awareness within the EU Commission and among the beneficiaries. I invited him in for a talk about this fundamental issue of the whole EU funding system and it ended up being a great conversation about shared frustrations, the big challenges within the system and what the EU Commission is actually doing to minimize the effects of the complexity.

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