Deadline: 01-Sep-21
European Commission is inviting proposals for European Partnership on Innovative SMEs.
Scope
- The proposal should provide mainly two types of activities. Firstly, regular calls for proposals resulting in collaborative research and innovation activities. These activities should result in a faster time to market, de-risking investment, supporting business growth, contributing to EU and global priorities and supporting access to markets and knowledge. Secondly, through coordination and support activities, the creation of synergies between and synchronisation of national programmes, and a better cooperation and knowledge exchange between national intermediaries.
- While collaborative research and innovation activities for internationalisation of innovative SMEs exist to some extent at Member State and EU level the alignment of national programmes and more effective and efficient processes of intermediaries and funding bodies are not addressed in instruments and programmes other than the Eurostars 1 and 2 programmes, supported under previous framework programmes. The initiative should draw on the experiences, and build on the successes, of those predecessor programmes.
Objectives
- The overall objective of the initiative is to implement a Co-funded European Partnership for Innovative SMEs to stimulate economic growth and job creation by enhancing the competitiveness of innovative SMEs while contributing to deliver a positive economic, societal and environmental impact in Europe and beyond.
- In order to address that objective, the initiative should:
- Enable innovative SMEs to develop all forms of innovation, including breakthrough innovation, and strengthen market deployment of innovative solutions;
- Foster the internationalisation of innovative SMEs;
- Connect national programmes to unlock the potential of all partners.
Funding Information
Grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000 except for:
- public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
- cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (lowvalue grant).
Expected Outcomes
Projects results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:
- Improved knowledge transfer in the innovative SMEs ecosystem, through increased and sustained collaboration between SMEs, public research partners and academia;
- Mitigation of difficulties in access to finance for innovative SMEs and thus contribute to enhanced growth and expansion of innovative SMEs;
- Improved innovative SME access to new international markets or value chains thus leading to improved market share and sales for innovative SMEs increasing their employment capacity;
- Increase public research and innovation funding to innovative SMEs, to spur more high quality collaborations and more innovative solutions;
- Pull together national efforts to spur internationalisation and collaboration in innovative SMEs, avoiding unnecessary duplication leading to a simplified offer to beneficiaries, achieving a more balanced geographic participation, ensuring complementarity and improved innovation ecosystems across Europe.
Eligibility Criteria
- Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from non-associated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call topic.
- 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 eligible countries, i.e:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions;
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States;
- eligible non-EU countries:
- countries associated to Horizon Europe
- low- and middle-income countries
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