It's not directly funded by the EU, it's funded by NLNet which is only in part funded by the EU. The goal is to collect money from large sources (e.g. EU) from relatively complex subsidiaries that are too big for small projects then dispatch and evaluate.

Source : I have an NLNet funded project, so like Xous https://github.com/betrusted-io/xous-core?tab=readme-ov-file... I have such banners at the bottom of my repository.