CFAs: European Cross-Border Grant Programme

This award-winning European Cross-Border Grant programme (running since 2009) supports cross-border teams of professional journalists and/or news outlets who have good ideas for cross-border investigations and for research on European topics. The stories must be relevant to European target groups.

These are projects that have great news value and depth, and at the same time are original, innovative and time-consuming, and would not be realised without financial support. Projects can include cross-border research and established and innovative investigative methods.

Funding Information

• In 2024 the total grant budget is €900,000 to distribute over four application rounds (€225,000 per call).

Costs Covered

• A grant can cover two types of costs:
  • Working time of the journalists to conduct their investigation.
• Expenses:
  • Direct investigation expenses such as travel, visa, accommodation, translation, fixers, access to pay-databases, freedom of information (FOI) requests, legal screening, insurance, etc., …
  • Following expenses cannot be covered by the grants: overhead, office costs, investments goods (such as IT hardware, mobile phones, cameras, software …), production costs, recoverable VAT, food and beverage, per diems.
  • Grantees must minimize unnecessary travel, particularly air travel. Their policy is to only make essential trips and to champion alternative ways of collaborating with others. This saves time and money, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions (that contribute to global heating). They ask that their grantees do the same for the work that they fund and report to them on the air travel they make.
  • The grant can only cover costs for research, not for production.

Eligibility Criteria

• Cross-border investigative teams of at least two journalists and/or media outlets can submit a proposal for journalistic investigations in Europe. These are projects that have great news value and depth, and at the same time are original, innovative and time-consuming, and would not be realised without financial support.
• This grant programme is open to journalists/media outlets domiciled in at least two different countries. When relevant for the story, team members from outside Europe can be accepted, too. At least 80% of your requested budget should go to journalists/media from EU countries.
• The applicants must be professional freelance journalists and/or media outlets. Personal references and/or references to earlier work are essential in that respect. Students are not eligible. Media outlets must be legal entities officially incorporated at least one year before the application deadline of the grant call.
• The project must be published by at least two professional news outlets in at least two different European countries. Letters of intent (LOI) for publication from at least two professional news outlets are required.
• Journalists who were previously allocated a grant by Journalismfund Europe can reapply. The jury will include the result of previous grants in their evaluation of the new application.
• Investigative journalism published by professional media in any form is eligible, no matter whether print, online, broadcast or cross-media. All journalistic end products qualify for a grant: newspaper and magazine articles, radio and television documentaries and series, photo-reportages and books, podcasts and journalistic non-fiction books.
• All relevant topics are eligible.

Assessment Criteria

• The jury will assess the applications based on these criteria:
  • Added value compared to mainstream coverage
  • Relevance in society
  • Newsworthiness
  • Quality and originality of research methods and presentation/storytelling
  • Feasibility of the investigation, timeline and budget
  • Team structure and experience of the applicants
  • Work effort requirement
  • Cross-border aspect
  • Pooling research, capacity and knowledge
  • Watchdog of EU institutions, policies and money
• Finally, the jury will also take into consideration the variety within the global selection of granted projects. This means diversity in terms of:
  • Region (both regarding stories and team members)
  • Topics
  • Methods and approaches
  • Publication forms
  • Team composition

Application Requirements

• The applications are assessed by an independent rotating jury of experts in investigative journalism. The jury members are chosen by Journalismfund Europe.
• The jury of the grant programmes will evaluate each project proposal separately according to the pre-set assessment criteria. As a second step, the jury will take into consideration the variety within the global selection of granted projects, securing diversity of the approved applications in terms of:
  • Regional diversity (both in topics and team members – north, south, east, west dimensions of Europe, pan-European projects);
  • Team diversity (gender, age, experience, skills, media background, origin);
  • Diversity of topics (environmental, social, historical, cultural, political, economic, financial or other issues).
  • Diversity of methods and approaches (data approach, constructive/solution journalism approach, etc.
  • Diversity of outputs/publications (print, online, multimedia, video, TV, radio).
  • In assembling both the jury and the mentoring pool Journalismfund Europe considers diversity and representativeness in gender, age, background, and professional expertise.
• Both Journalismfund Europe and the jury are bound to strict confidentiality – before, during and after evaluation of the proposals.
• The jury members remain anonymous until they leave the jury. This is to safeguard both the independence of the jury process and the confidentiality of the investigations. After their mandate is finished, the names of the jury members are made public by Journalismfund Europe.

For more information, visit Journalismfund Europe.