Slovakia reached the highest overall success rate, achieving 19.4% in the 2025 calls under Cluster 3 – Civil Security for Society within the Horizon Europe programme. (Slovakia’s overall success rate in H2020 in Cluster 3 was 9.1%, while the current overall success rate across the entire Horizon Europe programme for this country stands at 19.1%.) Among all participating countries, Luxembourg ranked second in Cluster 3 with 13%, followed by Belgium in third place with an average success rate of 12.8%. Out of a total of 93 participations by Slovak entities in project proposals, 18 were successful, receiving a total EU contribution of €2.6 million. In 2025, a total of 600 project proposals were submitted under Cluster 3, representing a 38% increase compared to 2024.
Traditionally, the Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic ranks among the most successful applicants, this time securing 5 successful projects. Slovak applicants performed well across several thematic areas, including:
- Better Protection of the EU and Its Citizens Against Crime and Terrorism,
- Effective Management of EU External Borders,
- Disaster-Resilient Society for Europe,
- Strengthened Security Research and Innovation.
Other successful organisations include Keennovate s.r.o., Innovatrics s.r.o., ISEM – Institute for International Security and Crisis Management, Centre of Scientific and Technical Information of the Slovak Republic (CVTI SR), Telenet o.z., GLOBSEC, and SEC Technologies s.r.o.
The projects will focus, for example, on:
- innovative technologies for detecting concealed weapons, explosives, and suspicious behaviour in crowded public spaces,
- crypto-forensic tools, algorithms, and visual analytics to trace transactions across multiple ledgers,
- a next-generation multi-person border control corridor for travellers on foot,
- overall improvement of expertise in Cluster 3,
- detecting, understanding, and disrupting the digital infrastructures that enable organised crime and hybrid threats,
- developing, validating and demonstrating a rights-preserving, interoperable age-assessment capability for EU borders,
- communication challenges by developing a secure, AI-enabled, and multilingual cross-border communication framework.
These projects are expected to start their implementation in August or September 2026.
Despite this positive development, there is still room for improvement, particularly in the participation of Slovak entities in coordinator roles across the various clusters of the Horizon Europe programme.
Published 14.4.2026, slord