I am just very sensitive about public funded projects.
To give you an example:
"XYZ is a project co-founded by the European Union that aims to validate how to approach Open & User Driven Innovation methodologies to the Public Sector in a scenario of Future Internet Services for Smart Cities. It will do so, by leveraging existing tools, trials and platforms in Crowdsourcing, Open Data, Fiber to the Home and Open Sensor Networks in seven major European cities: Helsinki, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Barcelona and Bologna."
Would YC fund that? Would they get an interview?
The EU gave 3M€ for that. The outcome is three websites that nobody uses.
There are companies in the EU specialised for grant grabbing. They will get 10% of the funding if the application succeeds.
The EU funds 50% and the expected outcome is that the funded companies will create a viable product out of it. Now tell me, why do the same companies funded over and over again?
Just google for "Wetab". The same company of that miserable disaster was on plenty of EU funded projects.