Erasmus+ KA220 partnerships prepared by ProBaltic Consulting have brought €1,050,000 in approved funding to three cooperation projects in higher education, built around 16 partners in 10 countries.
| Clients | 3 organisations (confidential) |
|---|---|
| Field | Higher education, training and competences |
| Programme / action | Erasmus+ KA220-HED — Cooperation Partnerships in Higher Education |
| Projects | 3 (2022 and 2024 calls) |
| Consortium size | 4, 5 and 7 partners |
| Partner type | Universities as full partners; companies as associated partners |
| Partner countries | Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Ireland, Ukraine |
| Coordinating agencies | Lithuanian and Slovak National Agencies |
| Approved funding | €1,050,000 |
| Services provided | Consortium building, application drafting, budget architecture, project administration |
Challenge
A KA220 application is not assessed on the strength of one organisation. It is assessed on whether the consortium reads as a genuine partnership, and evaluators bring the same suspicion to every file: is this real cooperation, or a coordinator with subcontractors? That question is answered — or lost — in the budget table, the hour allocation and the work-package logic, long before anyone reads the impact section.
The second difficulty is arithmetic. A consortium of seven partners in seven countries has to agree a division of work and money before submission, across institutions with different overhead rules, different academic calendars and, in one case, a partner operating under wartime conditions.
How the Erasmus+ KA220 partnerships were built
Three principles recur across all three files:
- No partner holds more than 30% of the grant. Allocations are negotiated participatorily and written into the Partnership Agreement. This is a documented answer to the coordinator-plus-subcontractors suspicion, not something the evaluator has to infer from the numbers.
- Every asymmetry in the hours table carries a one-line justification an evaluator can quote. Where the work is inherently collective — evaluation and quality assurance — hours are deliberately flattened across partners and the coordinator’s share reduced, so quality evidence comes consortium-wide.
- Horizontal priorities are engineered, not sprinkled. The green dimension sits inside the work packages as virtual meetings and fully digital deliverables; inclusion is carried by the localisation languages; qualification links name the official frameworks exactly (EQF level, ECTS-stackable micro-credentials under the 2023 EU guidelines), because evaluators scan for those references.
Consortium composition followed the same discipline. Universities take the full-partner roles that carry deliverables and budget, while companies join as associated partners — contributing pilot sites, industry validation and adoption pathways without the administrative burden of a full beneficiary. It keeps the consortium credible to evaluators and workable for the businesses involved.
Results
- 3 approved KA220-HED projects from the 2022 and 2024 calls;
- €1,050,000 in approved funding;
- 16 partners across 10 countries — Baltic, Central European, Western European and, in the reconstruction-focused project, Ukrainian;
- Consortia of 4, 5 and 7 partners, coordinated through two different National Agencies, meaning the applications were built to two distinct assessment practices;
- Themes spanning rapid application development skills, advanced project management for development and reconstruction, and artificial-intelligence talent for environmental problems.
Grant amounts quoted are the maximum sums confirmed in the funding decisions.
Is your consortium ready for Erasmus+ KA220 partnerships?
Most failed applications are not weak ideas — they are consortia assembled too late. Erasmus+ KA220 partnerships need every partner to agree the division of work, the budget share and the deliverable ownership before submission, and that negotiation takes longer than writing the narrative.
Before drafting we check three things: whether each partner brings a capability the others lack, whether the coordinator has the administrative capacity for a multi-year grant agreement, and whether the theme matches the priorities of the National Agency the application goes to. Erasmus+ KA220 partnerships are assessed nationally, so the same consortium can score differently depending on where it applies.
Associated partners are the most underused instrument in Erasmus+ KA220 partnerships: a company can supply pilot sites and industry validation without carrying beneficiary reporting duties.
Timing matters as much as composition. Erasmus+ KA220 partnerships run on an annual call cycle, and a consortium that starts forming after the call text is published is already late. The strongest Erasmus+ KA220 partnerships we have prepared began as working relationships months before anyone drafted a budget.
Planning a similar project?
ProBaltic Consulting has prepared projects worth more than €250 million since 2007, helping clients secure over €90 million in non-dilutive grants — see our track record or browse other success stories. Current opportunities are listed under open funding calls, and the programme rules are published in the Erasmus+ Programme Guide. Learn about our services or contact us for an eligibility assessment. We work on a fixed preparation fee plus a success fee.