Executive Agencies

Executive Agencies (EACEA, REA)

The European Union (EU) has six executive agencies, established by the European Commission for fixed periods to manage and implement specific EU programs.

These agencies with the include the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA), European Research Executive Agency (REA), European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA), European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), European Research Council Executive Agency (ERCEA), and European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA).

Executive Agencies (EACEA, REA)

Do

• Treat safety and organisational resilience as standard and eligible budget lines in all programmes, including Creative Europe and Horizon Europe calls. Costs for digital security, psycho-social support, and legal defence should be explicitly recognised, not left to interpretation.

• Encourage and fund multi-actor consortia that bring together international, regional, and local media organisations, ensuring that smaller actors are supported rather than sidelined in partnership structures.

• Provide entry points for first-time grantees and smaller organisations through lighter compliance pathways, reduced documentation requirements, and technical assistance to help them navigate EU procedures.

• Accept anonymised reporting and redacted documentation where disclosure could put partners at risk, especially in hostile political environments.

• Recognise coordination, networking, and convening activities as deliverables in their own right, not merely overhead. Support should allow grantees to dedicate staff time to coalition-building, advocacy, and ecosystem engagement.

• Require projects to include clear learning and dissemination strategies so that results, lessons, and innovations are shared beyond the immediate grantee.

Don’t

• Don’t publish sensitive information about grantees, such as detailed partner lists, staff names, or locations, where this could endanger media organisations and journalists.

• Don’t penalise organisations for reallocating funds to address urgent needs such as emergency security or legal defence.

• Don’t evaluate proposals or projects only on narrow, short-term output metrics (e.g. number of articles produced), but rather on sustainability, safety, and ecosystem contributions.

• Don’t favour applicants with extensive prior EU funding experience over local or regional actors who may lack administrative track records but have strong journalistic credibility and community reach.

• Don’t require uniform visibility or branding if this compromises the credibility or safety of the grantee.

Best practice

• Introduce staged disbursement mechanisms (e.g. tranche payments tied to milestones) to smooth grantees’ cash flow and prevent liquidity crises during lengthy EU payment cycles.

• Create dedicated “first-time grantee tracks” with simplified compliance rules, proportionate financial checks, and targeted mentoring to expand access to EU funds.

• Conduct meta-evaluations across Creative Europe and Horizon Europe portfolios to identify broader trends and inform future programme design, rather than evaluating projects in isolation.

• Develop scoring criteria that reward complementarity and ecosystem impact — i.e. how well a proposal fits with ongoing EU and Member State actions — rather than rewarding size or past performance alone.

• Establish an internal knowledge hub within the agencies to capture and share learning from funded projects, ensuring institutional memory and reducing duplication.

• Work with DGs and Delegations to align reporting requirements with Commission-wide harmonisation efforts, contributing to lighter and more coherent administrative systems.