Curaçao is formally eligible to participate in Horizon Europe, the European Union’s massive research and innovation program. The European Commission’s 2026–2027 work program explicitly lists Curaçao among the Overseas Countries and Territories whose organizations are, in principle, eligible for funding.
That should represent an important opportunity for an island that regularly talks about economic diversification, innovation, renewable energy, climate resilience, sustainable tourism, food security, digitalization and developing a knowledge-based economy.
Yet there is a striking gap between eligibility and participation.
An expert report examining participation by European Overseas Countries and Territories in EU programs between 2021 and 2024 records Horizon Europe projects for Aruba and Bonaire, but its country section for Curaçao contains no Horizon Europe projects at all. Curaçao did participate successfully in several other European programs, including Erasmus+, Creative Europe, the Internal Security Fund, the Justice Programme and BESTLIFE2030.
That distinction matters.
Curaçao is clearly capable of obtaining European funding. The question is why that experience has apparently not translated into Horizon Europe.
The money is there — but so is the competition
Horizon Europe is not an easy source of money.
European Commission figures covering April 2021 through July 2025 show that only 15.3 percent of proposals were successful. In other words, roughly 15 out of every 100 proposals received funding.
The quality of the unsuccessful proposals is particularly revealing.
The Commission estimates that an additional €96.2 billion would have been necessary to finance all proposals that were evaluated as high quality but could not be funded with the available budget.
So rejection does not necessarily mean that a project was poor.
For a small Curaçao company, university department, research organization or foundation, that creates a difficult calculation. Preparing a competitive European proposal can require considerable time, expertise and money, often without any guarantee of receiving a euro.
Many Horizon Europe projects also require international consortia. Standard collaborative calls commonly involve at least three independent organizations from different EU Member States or associated countries, although individual calls can have different rules.
For organizations already embedded in European research networks, finding those partners may be relatively straightforward.
For a small innovator sitting in Willemstad, it can be an entirely different exercise.
Aruba found a way in
The comparison with Aruba is difficult to ignore.
The OCT participation report records two Horizon Europe projects involving Aruba between 2021 and 2024.
The United Farmers Aruba Association received €119,250 through a project related to food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and the environment.
The University of Aruba received €318,875 through a project involving culture, creativity and inclusive society.
Together, Aruba received €438,125 in Horizon Europe funding.
Bonaire also recorded two participations. The Bonaire government received €184,500 through a project in the food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and environment cluster. A second participation involving Cooperatie Wolfs Company UA was recorded without an EU contribution because, according to a footnote in the report, its participation in the project was cancelled.
And then there is Curaçao.
No Horizon Europe section appears under Curaçao in the report, while the report does list Curaçao’s participation in numerous other EU programs.
That does not prove that Curaçao organizations never submitted Horizon proposals and were rejected. The report documents participation and funding, not every unsuccessful application or every organization that considered applying and eventually decided against it.
That missing information may actually be the most important part of this story.
What if Curaçao's innovators aren't applying?
The obvious conclusion would be that Curaçao needs to submit more proposals.
But before arriving there, policymakers should ask why participation is apparently so low.
How many Curaçao businesses, researchers and institutions have investigated Horizon Europe opportunities since 2021? How many started applications? How many submitted? How many abandoned the process?
And why?
Was it too complicated? Too expensive? Did applicants lack European partners? Was there insufficient local assistance to navigate the system? Were companies unwilling to spend months preparing a proposal with an approximately 15 percent overall success rate?
Or was there another concern: protecting the idea itself?
Fear of losing an idea is not imaginary
For entrepreneurs, particularly those whose competitive advantage is based on proprietary technology, a process or specialized know-how, joining a consortium can raise an uncomfortable question.
How much do you reveal before you know whether the project will even receive financing?
That concern should not simply be dismissed as paranoia. The European Commission’s own European IP Helpdesk has warned Horizon applicants about precisely this risk.
In guidance on preparing Horizon Europe proposals, the Helpdesk describes cases in which potential partners learned about a research concept during preliminary consortium discussions, left the negotiations and subsequently participated in a competing proposal based on similar ideas.
There is an important legal complication: an idea by itself generally cannot be protected through conventional intellectual property rights.
The European IP Helpdesk therefore advises applicants to establish confidentiality arrangements before revealing sensitive information to potential consortium partners. Non-disclosure agreements can establish contractual restrictions on how information may be used and disclosed.
It even advises innovators to disclose information on a need-to-know basis and warns that revealing details of a potentially patentable invention too early could jeopardize novelty requirements for future intellectual property protection.
This needs an important qualification.
There is no evidence that the European Commission takes applicants’ ideas and passes them to others. In fact, the Commission says proposals submitted to it are treated confidentially and that evaluators are subject to confidentiality obligations.
The vulnerability identified by the European IP Helpdesk concerns, among other things, the period before submission, when innovators may be negotiating with prospective partners and building the consortium required for a proposal.
For a Curaçao entrepreneur with one promising idea and limited resources, that distinction matters enormously.
Curaçao is not incapable of accessing Europe
There is another reason not to interpret the lack of Horizon projects as evidence that Curaçao lacks innovative organizations or the ability to navigate European programs.
The same OCT report shows extensive Curaçao participation elsewhere.
It records 66 Erasmus+ projects involving Curaçao and approximately €1.91 million in funding to the island. Curaçao organizations also participated in the European Solidarity Corps, Creative Europe, the Internal Security Fund and Justice Programme. The Curaçao Deep Reef Research Centre received €98,866 through BESTLIFE2030.
The problem therefore appears more specific than simply “Curaçao cannot get EU money.”
The island has demonstrated that it can.
The more useful question is why Horizon Europe appears to be the exception.
Eligibility is not accessibility
This is where government policy becomes important.
Putting Curaçao on a European list of eligible territories does not automatically make billions in European research funding practically accessible to a small business in Saliña, an environmental organization in Westpunt, a technology startup in Pietermaai or a researcher at the University of Curaçao.
Formal eligibility is only the first step.
If Curaçao wants to benefit seriously from Horizon Europe, it may need an infrastructure that bridges the enormous distance between “you are eligible” and “you have a competitive proposal.”
That could mean actively identifying calls that match Curaçao's economic priorities, connecting local organizations with credible European consortium partners, providing specialist assistance with applications and helping businesses establish intellectual-property and confidentiality strategies before sensitive information is shared.
It could also mean helping local innovators decide when Horizon Europe is appropriate — and when another financing instrument would be better.
The government should first find out what is happening
Before creating another program or committee, however, Curaçao needs data.
How many Horizon Europe applications have actually come from Curaçao since 2021?
The OCT report does not answer that question.
Neither does it tell us how many potential applicants considered participating but withdrew before submission.
Without those numbers, policymakers cannot know whether Curaçao has an awareness problem, an application-support problem, a networking problem, a competitiveness problem or a trust problem.
That distinction is critical.
If nobody knows Horizon Europe exists, the solution is information.
If organizations know about it but cannot find partners, the solution is international matchmaking.
If applicants cannot handle the administrative burden, they need technical support.
If strong applications are being submitted but rejected, Curaçao needs to understand why.
And if entrepreneurs are deliberately staying away because they fear exposing commercially valuable knowledge while constructing international consortia, then the conversation must include intellectual-property protection and trust.
A €14 billion opportunity deserves more attention
The timing makes the issue particularly relevant.
The European Commission’s Horizon Europe Work Programme for 2026–2027 contains around €14 billion for research and innovation, and Curaçao remains explicitly included among the eligible Overseas Countries and Territories.
The door is therefore still open.
But after four years in which the OCT participation report recorded Horizon projects for neighboring Aruba and Bonaire while none appeared for Curaçao, simply pointing to that open door is no longer enough.
Curaçao should determine why its organizations are apparently not walking through it.
The answer may be a lack of awareness. It may be bureaucracy, limited capacity, difficulty finding international partners, the cost of competing for funding with a success rate of only 15.3 percent, concerns about protecting intellectual property — or a combination of all of them.
But it should not automatically be interpreted as a lack of innovation.
If Curaçao wants to build the innovative, diversified and knowledge-driven economy that policymakers repeatedly say the island needs, then understanding why its innovators are absent from one of the world's largest research and innovation funding programs would be a good place to start.