In episode #249 of The Grant – the EU funding podcast, I’m joined by Annika Jaansoo, founder of Transforming Borders and a long-time EU funding professional with extensive experience in cross-border cooperation.

Our starting point is AI. But this is not another conversation about how to use ChatGPT to write better proposals.

Instead, we ask what happens when AI changes the economics and mechanics of the whole funding system. More applicants can now produce polished proposals. Application volumes rise. Success rates fall. Evaluators face growing workloads. And increasingly, very highly scored proposals still fail to receive funding. Annika’s argument is that AI has not necessarily broken the system. Rather, it has exposed weaknesses that were already there: an evaluation model heavily dependent on written applications, inconsistent interpretation of criteria, difficulties distinguishing good writing from good ideas and a growing problem of trust among applicants.

We also look at experiments already taking place in Interreg, including pitches and hearings designed to reduce reliance on long written applications. And we discuss Annika’s monthly roundtables, where practitioners come together to identify problems and translate the discussions into policy briefs aimed at the European Commission and other institutions. The bigger question running through the episode is simple:

If AI changes how proposals are written, do we also need to change how projects are selected?

Time codes:

02:19 Guest introduction and fly in

11:43 AI and the Proposal Explosion

39:50 Are We Evaluating the Right Things?

01:00:47 Reflections and advice

01:01:30 The toughest challenge