Most consortia treat communication, dissemination and exploitation as a work package to be staffed and then survived. Evaluators and project officers read them differently: as evidence of whether the consortium understands what happens to its results after the technical work is finished. That gap is where projects lose scores at proposal stage and lose relevance at review stage.
This guide is written for coordinators and work package leaders who already sit inside an EU-funded project, or are about to. It covers what the Grant Agreement actually obliges you to do, what a plan that survives review contains, which free European Commission tools most consortia never touch, and where coordinators reliably lose points.
The three activities are not interchangeable
The single most common structural error is writing one block of text that blends all three activities together. They have different audiences, different purposes and different legal footing. Treating them as one signals to an evaluator that the consortium has not understood the requirement.
A practical test: communication is about the project, dissemination is about the results, and exploitation is about what the results are used for. If a sentence in your plan does not clearly belong to one of the three, it belongs in none of them.
What the Grant Agreement actually obliges you to do
The obligations sit in Article 17 of the Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement. Communication is not optional goodwill — it is a contractual requirement, as are dissemination of results and the display of the EU emblem and funding statement on materials produced with grant funding. The European Research Executive Agency sets out the emblem and funding-statement rules in detail in its guidance on communicating about your EU-funded project.
Three specifics that coordinators most often mishandle:
- Results must be disclosed as early as is reasonably possible, subject to legitimate restrictions — intellectual property protection, security rules, confidentiality or legitimate interests. Withholding results by default is not compliant; withholding them for a documented reason is.
- Advance notice applies. Partners are entitled to be notified before dissemination and to object within the stated period. Build that notice window into your internal process, not into an ad-hoc email chain.
- The obligation outlives the project. Exploitation and dissemination duties continue for a defined period after the end date. A consortium that dissolves entirely at month 36 has not finished its obligations.
For step-by-step guidance, the Horizon Europe Programme Guide devotes a dedicated section to dissemination, exploitation and communication; the European Research Executive Agency’s D&E starter kit is the most practical free summary available.
The PDEC: what a plan that passes review contains
Most Horizon Europe projects owe the Commission a Plan for the Dissemination and Exploitation of results including Communication activities — commonly the PDEC — as an early deliverable, typically due within the first six months. Consortia that write it as a formality end up rewriting it at the first review.
A plan that holds up contains, at minimum:
- A separate section per activity — communication, dissemination, exploitation — with no blending.
- Named audiences, not categories. “Industry” is not an audience; a specific class of manufacturer with a specific procurement cycle is.
- A message per audience, expressed in terms of what changes for that audience, not what the project does.
- Channels matched to audiences, with a rationale for each — not a channel inventory.
- Timing across the project lifecycle: early, mid and late activities have different purposes, and evaluators look for that distinction.
- Named responsibilities per partner and per task. A plan where the communication partner owns everything is a plan that will underdeliver.
- Indicators with baselines and targets, and a monitoring process that produces them — not a list of metrics with no collection method.
- An initial identification of Key Exploitable Results, even if provisional at month six.
- A route for updating the plan. It is a living document, and reviewers ask when it was last revised.
Key Exploitable Results: the concept coordinators underuse
A result is any tangible or intangible output of the action — data, knowledge, software, a method, a dataset, a policy recommendation — together with attached rights. Key Exploitable Results are the subset the partners prioritise as having genuine downstream value: usable further along a value chain, or as a substantive input to policy, further research or education.
Identifying KERs early changes how a project behaves. It forces the consortium to decide which outputs matter, who owns them, who might use them, and what has to be true for that use to happen. Consortia that defer this to the final year usually discover that ownership questions were never settled and that the intended users were never consulted.
A workable approach: identify candidate KERs at month six, assess each for maturity and ownership at every reporting period, and narrow rather than expand the list as the project progresses. Three well-supported KERs will outperform twelve unowned ones at final review.
Free EU tools most consortia never use
The European Commission funds a support ecosystem specifically for dissemination and exploitation. It is free, it is underused, and reviewers notice when a consortium has engaged with it.
A short line in your periodic report noting which of these you have engaged with, and what came of it, does more for a review than three pages of activity counts.
Where coordinators lose points
These are the recurring failures, in rough order of how often they appear:
- Conflating the three activities into one undifferentiated section.
- Generic impact claims. “Significant societal benefit” asserts an outcome without describing a mechanism, an audience or a measure.
- Counting outputs instead of measuring effects. Twelve workshops held is an activity metric; a named stakeholder group that changed a practice is an impact metric.
- Treating the communication partner as the owner of all visibility. Technical partners own the substance; nobody else can supply it.
- Writing the plan once and never revising it, then presenting the month-six version at the month-thirty review.
- Leaving exploitation to the final work package, by which point ownership, maturity and user interest are all unresolved.
- Missing the EU emblem and funding statement on materials, which is a straightforward compliance finding and entirely avoidable.
- No stakeholder engagement beyond the consortium. Uptake requires people outside the project to have been involved before the results exist.
Indicators that hold up at review
The distinction that matters is between activity, reach and effect. Most plans measure the first, some measure the second, and reviewers are looking for the third.
| Level | Example indicator | What it demonstrates |
| Activity | Number of workshops delivered; publications submitted; posts published | That the work package executed. Necessary, not sufficient. |
| Reach | Composition of workshop attendance by stakeholder type; downloads by sector; citations | That the right audiences were actually reached, not just any audience |
| Effect / uptake | A standards body that took up a result; a public authority that cited a recommendation; a partner that licensed an output; a curriculum that adopted a method | That the results are being used — the only evidence that supports an impact claim |
Set baselines at month six. An indicator without a baseline cannot show change, and a target set retrospectively is visible as such.
How Nexuswelt works with coordinators
Nexuswelt supports coordinators and consortium partners on exactly this layer: communication, dissemination, exploitation logic, stakeholder engagement and impact-oriented delivery. The firm contributes to EU-funded projects as a partner rather than an external vendor, which is why the work covers stakeholder relevance, acceptance and uptake rather than output volume alone. More on the approach is on the Nexuswelt about page, and our earlier piece on the art of EU project communication covers the design side of the same problem.
If you are preparing a proposal and the dissemination and exploitation section is the part nobody on the consortium wants to own, that is the point at which involving a partner changes the score rather than the workload.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between dissemination and exploitation in an EU project?
Dissemination is the public disclosure of results so that others can find and use them. Exploitation is the actual use of those results — commercially, or in further research, policy, standardisation or education. Dissemination is about sharing; exploitation is about application.
Is communication legally required in Horizon Europe projects?
Yes. Communication, dissemination and the display of the EU emblem and funding statement are obligations under Article 17 of the Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement, not optional additions.
When is the dissemination and exploitation plan due?
For most Horizon Europe projects the Plan for the Dissemination and Exploitation of results including Communication activities is an early deliverable, typically due within the first six months of the project. It is expected to be updated during the project rather than written once.
What is a Key Exploitable Result?
A Key Exploitable Result is a prioritised project output that the partners identify as having genuine downstream value — usable further along a value chain, or as a substantive input to policy, further research or education. Results can be tangible or intangible, including data, software, methods and knowledge.
Do dissemination obligations end when the project ends?
No. Exploitation and dissemination obligations continue for a defined period after the project’s end date. Consortia should plan for post-project responsibilities rather than assume the duties close with the final report.
What free support does the European Commission provide for dissemination and exploitation?
The main free instruments are the Horizon Results Platform, the Horizon Results Booster, the Dissemination and Exploitation Support Facility, the Innovation Radar, Open Research Europe and the European IP Helpdesk. All are available to beneficiaries at no cost and are consistently underused.
Who should own dissemination and exploitation inside a consortium?
A dedicated partner or work package should coordinate it, but ownership of substance cannot be delegated. Technical partners own their results and their intended users; a communication partner cannot supply that knowledge on their behalf.
Sources
- Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement (Article 17 — communication, dissemination and visibility)
- European Research Executive Agency — Dissemination and exploitation
- European Research Executive Agency — Communicating about your EU-funded project
- Horizon Europe NCP Portal — Horizon Results Platform
- Horizon Europe France — Dissemination and Exploitation Support Facility
- Horizon Europe — official research and innovation portal
- EU Funding & Tenders Portal — Horizon Europe programme page
