To be successful, especially as for the EU project preparation, the consortium building is a fundamental activity. Winning consortia need indeed to prove complementarities in terms of expertise, disciplines, geography, organization types (e.g. academia, SMEs, etc), involved human resources. EU projects should have a reasonable representation of researchers and end-users (academia, industry, SMEs, associations). In most cases, it is the specific Work Programme to include requirements for the composition of the consortium.   

The best way to find partners is actually to use the already existing networks in academia and industry as well as suppliers, customers and even competitors.  But, what about newcomers? Well, participating in major European conferences in own research field, events such as brokerage or other events dedicated to the searching of partners, or national and international workshops is highly recommended.

Luckily, there are moreover several services providing for partner search that publishes information about people, groups, or organisations looking for a partner as well as project ideas. Often one can also add its own partner finding request. Below you can find some of the most used databases. 

The most common as for the FP7 and CIP programmes, is the "CORDIS Partner Service"  also used by existing consortia to submit new projects in the search for partners. These profiles and collaboration requests are currently active to build your network

·13798 Partner profiles

·19 Open FP7 Calls for Proposals

·567 Partnership requests

o    118 Proposing project

o    449 Offering collaboration

·243 Groups

There are also various support networks that help search for partners and consortia, provide information on projects being prepared and an opportunity to publicise the skills you plan to contribute as a project partner.

Support Networks and Partner Search Tools

 The National Contact Point networks can provide further support to find partners in your specific FP7 as well as for the CIP .

For FP7: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/get-support_en.htmly

For the CIP:

— NCPs for the IEE programme: http://ec.europa.eu/energy/intelligent/contact/national_en.htm

— NCPs for the ICT - PSP: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/ict_psp/contacts/ncp/index_en.htm

— NCPs for the Eco-innovation actions: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/eco-innovation/contactncp_en.htm

As explained in the practical guide on EU funding by the European Commission, more services exist and new tools such as Linked IN are now also used for getting in contact with new potential partners. Do not be shy, use them all!