"We call on the European Commission and the member states to ensure widely spread and predictable call deadlines of Framework Programmes year after year, in line with the objective to support the professionalisation of research management and regardless of transition periods in the leadership of the European Commission", state Cesaer Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research and The Guild The Guild of European research-intensive universities on 10/06/2025.

The two university associations note that in a typical year, call deadlines under Horizon Europe are evenly distributed. 2025 is an exception due to the transition to new EU European Union policy priorities. To maintain continuity, the Horizon Europe 2023-2024 work programme was updated to include some 2025 calls, while the remaining calls were scheduled to follow the transition. This has resulted in an unusual concentration of deadlines in September 2025 and will cause a "significant impact on research managers across Europe".

"The workload will be extremely high around the summer of 2025, creating human resources challenges and forcing researchers and research managers to prioritise due to this artificial bottleneck, rather than on the basis of the quality and potential of the proposals. Some Research Support Offices may resort to hiring consultants for grant support activities, which may hinder the professionalisation of the community and the development of a grantspersonship culture in institutions."

Cesaer and The Guild suggest the adoption of good practices, in particular adjusting the timing of call closures to earlier in the day. "For example, setting call deadlines at 14:00 (rather than end of day) has shown positive results in some national contexts. We suggest that the European Commission pilots such adjustments in future work programmes, building on these best practices".