Governing Horizon Europe Consortia : A Decision-Making Framework for Project Governance in Multi-Actor Research and Innovation Programs

Abstract Horizon Europe projects are executed through complex consortia bringing together heterogeneous actors such as enterprises, universities, research laboratories, public bodies, and non-governmental organizations. These consortia are neither unified organizations nor classical project teams; they constitute temporary meta-organizations governed primarily by contractual and institutional mechanisms. This article proposes a decision-support framework for selecting and combining project governance and management reference frameworks—PM², ISO 21502, PMBOK, and PRINCE2—across the Horizon Europe consortium lifecycle. Rather than evaluating methodologies through project performance metrics, the analysis focuses on governance adequacy, coordination capability, compliance, and operational pragmatism. The resulting framework is designed to support coordinators, PMOs, and partners in making informed, context-aware methodological choices.