A similar thing happened with the draft work programmes for Horizon 2020, before its official launch in 2014. Then a quick Google search served up several “confidential” documents, providing crucial information for those interested in applying for the first calls under the €70 billion programme.
That led to criticisms – denied by the Commission - that a select group of institutes and universities had been given a preview of the crucial documents, well ahead of the first round of calls.
The publication of draft work programmes has been a long-simmering issue in the Commission’s framework R&D programmes. The documents are written by Commission staffers in several drafts over a few years, and the later drafts are shared with the Programme Committees – the legally constituted groups of EU member state representatives who have a say in how the work programmes end up. That means there are hundreds of officials across the EU have access to the documents. Inevitably, they leak to universities, companies and others outside the formal legal process.