Thematic Coherence in Mission-Oriented EU Energy Policy: A Network-Based Analysis of Horizon Europe’s Sustainability Funding Calls

César Palmero (), Nieves Arranz and Marta F. Arroyabe ()
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César Palmero: CIRCE Foundation-Research Centre for Energy Resources and Consumption-Zaragoza, 50018 Zaragoza, Spain
Nieves Arranz: Department of Applied Economics, School of Economics and Business, UNED, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Marta F. Arroyabe: Essex Business School, University of Essex, Southend-on-Sea SS1 1LW, UK

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 20, 1-23

Abstract: While Horizon Europe is expected to turn the European Union’s Mission-Oriented Innovation Policy (MOIP) into concrete actions, little is known about how coherently its funding calls translate high-level ambitions into effective guidance. To address this, we move beyond the traditional focus on funded projects and offer the first systematic analysis of Horizon Europe call texts as cognitive artefacts of policy design. Using Textual Network Analysis (TNA) on 188 calls of Cluster 5 (“Climate, Energy and Mobility”) in the 2021–2022 Work Programme, we compare Scope and Expected Outcomes texts. We constructed weighted co-occurrence networks and calculated centrality, community structure, and assortativity metrics. Results reveal clear differences between layers: Scope texts show stronger clustering of technical domains (modularity 0.54, assortativity +0.206), while Outcomes present weaker clustering (modularity 0.50, assortativity −0.035), reflecting convergence around high-level impacts. Across both layers, a small set of hubs (“renewable energy”, “climate change”, “emissions”) dominates, with high-betweenness terms bridging siloed domains; peripheral concepts remain weakly linked. The study contributes a novel framework for analysing the architecture of funding calls and demonstrates the utility of centrality metrics for policymakers to identify conceptual gaps and guide future Work Programme design, as well as for applicants optimising their proposal writing.

Keywords: Horizon Europe; MOIP; funding; innovation management; network analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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