What is a PIC and when do I need one?

A PIC (Participant Identification Code) is the 9-digit ID your organisation gets once by registering in the Portal's Participant Register. You reuse the same PIC on every future proposal instead of re-entering your legal and financial details, and you need it before you can open the Submission Wizard for any topic.

Who actually submits the proposal if I'm applying with a consortium?

Only the contact person of the coordinating organisation can create and submit the proposal through the Submission Wizard, though every partner can log in beforehand and fill in their own sections. Once submitted, all contact persons of the coordinator get an automatic confirmation email together with a time-stamped e-receipt.

What is the EU Funding & Tenders Portal?

The EU Funding & Tenders Portal is the European Commission's single system for finding, applying to and managing EU grants and procurement contracts — including Horizon Europe research calls and the European Defence Fund. Every applicant registers once for a 9-digit Participant Identification Code (PIC), then uses the same account to search open topics, submit proposals through a Submission Wizard, and track the resulting grant. It replaced the Participant Portal in 2017 and is now the mandatory point of contact for these Commission-managed calls — nothing is submitted by email or on paper.

How search works

Every call on the Portal follows the same structure: a call is a group of topics open in parallel under one policy area, and each topic carries its own opening and closing date. The Search funding & tenders page lets you search call and topic titles, identifiers, descriptions, keywords and tags, and filter by priority area. A topic's page holds everything you need to prepare a proposal — conditions, legal framework, key documents, the application template — plus its deadline model: a single full-proposal deadline, a two-stage outline-then-full process, or a rolling multiple-cut-off call. Horizon Europe's space cluster, EDF's space-relevant calls and most EU-agency space tenders sit behind the same search and filters.

Registering: PIC, EU Login and roles

Browsing is open to anyone, but acting on a call needs two things: an EU Login account (just a work email address; it replaced the old ECAS login) and a PIC — the 9-digit code your organisation gets once by registering in the Portal's Participant Register. The PIC stays provisional until the Central Validation Service checks your legal and financial documents, which happens only after a proposal involving you is selected for funding. Day to day, one person holds the LEAR (Legal Entity Appointed Representative) role and decides which Account Administrators can act for the organisation on the Portal.

Submitting a proposal

Each topic page has a Start Submission button that opens the Submission Wizard: pre-register the draft, list participants and contacts, fill in the auto-generated Part A administrative forms, upload the Part B technical description as a PDF, then submit. Proposals stay sealed until the call deadline; submitting generates a time-stamped e-receipt plus a confirmation email to the coordinator. This is the same rail the European Defence Fund uses, and the one most EU space calls run on — a separate system from ESA's own tendering platform, esa-star, which handles ESA-funded, not EU-Commission-funded, contracts.

Set up EU Login and a PIC before you need them — a first-time registration mid-deadline-week costs hours you don't have. VIRA lists open Horizon Europe, EDF and ESA space calls in one place, matched against your eligibility: see live tenders.

Official source: EU Funding & Tenders Portal.

Written by Tymofiy Badikov, founder of VIRA.space (Virtual Innovation Research Assistant) — operated by Space Tech Gateway Sp. z o.o., Kraków Technology Park. VIRA tracks live European space funding calls and checks your eligibility free: see live tenders.