Deadline: 23-Sep-25
The European Commission (EC) has launched the Co-funded Partnership Raw Materials for the Green and Digital Transition Programme.
Scope
- The objective of the European Partnership on Raw Materials is to strengthen the co-ordination of national and regional research programmes in the field of non-energy and non-agricultural raw materials, ensuring common understanding of R&I challenges to achieve the objectives of the Critical Raw Materials Act.
- The Partnership will build on the experience of ERA-NETs: ERA-MIN, ERA-MIN 2 and ERA-MIN 3. The Partnership should cover the whole raw materials value chain including exploration, extraction, processing technologies, and recycling and improve circularity. Sea mining is excluded from this topic.
- Proposals should pool the necessary financial resources from the participating national (or regional) research programmes with a view to implementing joint annual calls for proposals resulting in grants to third parties with EU co-funding in this area. Financial support provided by the participants to third parties is one of the primary activities of this action in order to be able to achieve its objectives.
- Beneficiaries should preferably be national, regional or local institutions responsible for programming research and innovation activities in raw materials. To ensure alignment of R&I activities and raw materials policy participation is also additionally open to relevant Ministries and public institutions responsible for raw materials and R&I policy.
Funding Information
- Funding available: 45 000 000
Eligible Activities
- The following activities are generally eligible for grants under Horizon Europe:
- Research and innovation actions (RIA) — Activities that aim primarily to establish new knowledge or to explore the feasibility of a new or improved technology, product, process, service or solution.
- Innovation actions (IA) — Activities that aim directly to produce plans and arrangements or designs for new, altered or improved products, processes or services. These activities may include prototyping, testing, demonstrating, piloting, large-scale product validation and market replication
- Coordination and support actions (CSA) — Activities that contribute to the objectives of Horizon Europe.
- Programme co-fund actions (CoFund) — A programme of activities established or implemented by legal entities managing or funding R&I programmes, other than EU funding bodies.
Expected Outcomes
- Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:
- Align national R&I priorities in raw materials with EU policy on raw materials.
- Strengthen EU cooperation with countries the EU established strategic partnerships on Raw Materials;
- Improve industrial viability, safety and environmental impacts of the operation in a way that leads to measurable improvements;
- Improve EU sourcing diversification of critical raw materials from third countries;
- Improve responsible supply of raw materials to Europe in line with the EU principles for sustainable raw materials, which are a non-regulatory set of principles based on the EU acquis. They set out requirements for sustainable raw materials and extraction and processing in Europe in terms of social, environmental and economic performance.
- Dissemination and exploitation of projects outputs is tailored for organisations and industry dealing with raw materials in the EU and project partner from Strategic partnership countries.
- Promote the utilisation of UNFC (United Nations Framework Classification for Resources) and UNRMS (United Nations Resource Management System) in the raw materials sector.
Eligibility Criteria
- Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from no associated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not).
- A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.
- To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions:
- Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States:
- Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curação (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
- countries associated to Horizon Europe;
- Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom.
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions:
For more information, visit EC.