A project we joined too late to save, and the screening discipline it produced.
The situation
We were engaged on a health-technology IPCEI project after the national selection phase had already concluded. The application had been drafted without us; the innovation narrative was cast, the project scope fixed, the counterfactual defined, the funding gap identified. Our mandate began at the point where the Commission's questions did.
What happened
We supported the client through the Commission's first round of questions, and the pattern in those questions was unmistakable to anyone who has read enough of them: the case team was probing whether the project genuinely went beyond the global state of the art — the single hardest eligibility test in the IPCEI framework — or whether it represented excellent-but-incremental innovation of the kind the market would deliver anyway.
The honest answer, visible in the file we inherited, was closer to the second. The R&D content was solid. The company was credible. But "beyond state of the art" is not a writing exercise — it is a substantive bar, and the project as scoped in the national phase did not clear it. The project concluded in pre-notification, before formal notification to the Commission.
What we learned
By the time an IPCEI file reaches the Commission's questions, roughly 80% of its fate is already decided. The innovation case is set during the national application — in how the project is scoped, which work packages are included, how the state of the art is benchmarked, whether the counterfactual is honest, whether the funding gap questionnaire tells a coherent story. RFI answers can defend a strong case brilliantly; they cannot manufacture one retroactively.
We also learned precisely where the bar sits. There is no substitute for watching a real case team dissect a real innovation claim — it is knowledge that cannot be extracted from published decisions, which only ever show the survivors.
How this changed our practice
We now run an innovation stress test before the national application is filed — not after. Every claim of "beyond state of the art" is benchmarked against the global technology frontier and challenged the way a Commission case team would challenge it, using the question patterns we have accumulated across dozens of RFI rounds. Where a project doesn't clear the bar, we say so early — and either help re-scope it until it does, or steer the client toward an instrument whose eligibility test it can win.
This is also why we encourage clients to engage before the national phase, not after. The national application is not a preliminary formality; it is the moment the Commission case is written.
The takeaway
The project ended in pre-notification, before formal notification — our record of Commission approvals on notified projects remains 100%. What we took from it is embedded in every engagement since: an eligibility bar tested against a live case, not just published decisions, and a screening discipline that protects our clients' time and our record alike.
Why we publish these
Most advisors show you their wins. We also want you to understand our judgment — and judgment is formed by the full distribution of outcomes, not the survivors. Fourteen IPCEI projects taught us where the Commission's real red lines sit, when the instrument fits, and when it doesn't. Eleven went to formal notification; all eleven were approved. The three that didn't get there are the reason we screen the way we do.