• Pillar 1 – Excellent Cience. Taking a bottom-up approach, it supports frontier research and breakthrough scientific ideas (European Research Council), teams up the best researchers from Europe and beyond and equips them with skills (Marie SkłodowskaCurie Actions) and world-class research infrastructures.
• Pillar 2 - Global challenges and european industrial Competitiveness. Made up of six clusters of R&I activities, to maximise integration and complementarities across the respective thematic areas while securing high and sustainable levels of impact for the EU in relation to the resources that are expended. It is important to note the creation of European Partnerships, missions, and the inclusion of the JRC as a decision making centre. Cluster Health has a budget of 8.246M€ and aims to improve human health and wellbeing and make healthcare systems more inclusive, accessible, sustainable and resilient to cross-border health threats, demographic change and the impacts of climate change and environmental challenges. Digitalisation and new digital technologies such as AI are key to responding to these challenges, as a tool to accelerate scientific discovery for health issues.
• Pillar III – Innovative Europe. Mainly directed by the European Innovation Council (EIC), helps improving the conditions for innovators to flourish at all levels of governance (through the European Innovation Ecosystems), supports the development of innovations to address EU strategic challenges, and strengthens EU technological sovereignty, particularly in deep tech and breakthrough innovation (through the Europe Innovation Council). It also fosters innovation and entrepreneurship through better education and skills and brings innovative solutions to global challenges to the market (through the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. 

While the three pillars build on each other, the ‘Widening Participation and Strengthening the ERA’ part (WIDERA), due to its cross-cutting nature, has an impact on all three pillars, which ultimately also supports the further implementation of the ERA. To increase the impact of Horizon Europe, narrow the innovation gap, and promote excellence, competitiveness and innovation across the ERA, the widening part will strengthen its links with the three pillars. Its activities will be aligned with the priorities set out in the 2021 Pact for Research and Innovation in Europe and be implemented through the ERA Policy Agenda, notably through thematic actions in areas relevant for the clusters.