Whoa - an EU Horizon thing that actually produced something kinda useful to citizens rather than just being a vehicle to shovel taxpayers money into whoever can produce the biggest pile of paperwork? Wow!
Of course, lot of those projects will go nowhere (and therefore seen as "waste" by some), that's bound to happen with any large scale program like this. But unless you make bets on a lot of projects, you won't get results like this submission.
I know a lot of people who apply for them... The vast majority of the projects everyone involved knows will shut up shop mere days after the funding ends. People buy equipment simply because they know they'll get to keep it after the project has folded. The whole team then pivots to the next project. There is zero chance of success of any of them - it's always more profitable to close down and use a different idea for the next round of fundings.
Maybe some of the projects will go somewhere, but there are a good chunk where even the project leads set off from the outset with the goal of getting as much EU money as possible and closing down as quickly as possible when the money stops.
If there is on average 20 people involved with each project who received funding, that would be 340,000 people in total. If you know 1000 people who are doing this scam, then you know 0.2% of the people involved in these projects.
To extrapolate that all the projects are similar scams to what your acquaintances are doing, seems a bit irrational.
But even so, that you know 1000 people, 100 people or even 10 people performing identical scams of government funds, seems unlikely, but even so, that you would know so many who are scammers, seems to say more about you than anything about the Horizon 2020 programme.
Abuse exists in pretty much any aspect of procurement, from building roads with inflated contractor prices to producing "analysis" from consultants who happen to be friends with the relevant minister. The private sector is not immune either, with plenty of shareholders money being funneled to the sales guy with the best golf routine.
Part of the solution is better law enforcement, which would include whistleblowing on your corrupt friends. Part is better oversight - and here you should bring it up with your national government, since EU authorities typically have little power to impose that once money has been disbursed to local entities.
Yeah I have that impression also of EU grants. There seems to be no touch point "on the ground" to see if people actually need what's being subsidized.
Where I lived in Ireland there was a "park" with some huge signs about how the EU was so generous to fund it.. But they failed to make an opening in the perimeter fence for people to actually enter. The paths just ended at a fence.
It was also totally useless as a park because it was a thin strip right next to a busy 4-lane road. You could hop the fence but it's useless trying to relax right beside a main road. Total cash grab from some real estate developer clearly.
