COMMISSION IMPLEMENTING DECISION

of 29.10.2024

on the financing of the European Innovation Council component of the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) and on the adoption of the Work Programme for 2025

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

Having regard to Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2024/2509 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 September 2024 on the financial rules applicable to the general budget of the Union (recast) 1  (‘the Financial Regulation’), and in particular Article 110 thereof,

Having regard to Regulation (EU) 2021/695 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 April 2021 establishing Horizon Europe – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, laying down its rules for participation and dissemination, and repealing Regulations (EU) No 1290/2013 and (EU) No 1291/2013 2 , and in particular Articles 45 to 48 thereof,

Having regard to Council Decision (EU) 2021/764 of 10 May 2021 establishing the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe – The Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, and repealing Decision 2013/743/EU 3 (‘Council Decision (EU) 2021/764’), and in particular Article 13(2), point (c) thereof,

Whereas:

(1)In order to ensure the implementation of the actions under the European Innovation Council component pursuant to the Council Decision (EU) 2021/764, it is necessary to adopt a financing decision which constitutes the Work Programme for the year 2025. Article 110 of the Financial Regulation establishes detailed rules on the financing decisions.

(2)The envisaged support is to comply with the conditions and procedures set out by the restrictive measures 4  adopted pursuant to Article 215 TFEU.

(3)The work programme should contribute to climate and biodiversity mainstreaming in line with Commission Communication ‘The European Green Deal’ and in the Interinstitutional Agreement of 16 December 2020 between the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission on budgetary discipline, on cooperation in budgetary matters and on sound financial management, as well as on new own resources, including a roadmap towards the introduction of new own resources.

(4)It is appropriate to authorise the award of grants without a call for proposals and to provide for the conditions for awarding those grants.

(5)It is necessary to protect the security and public order of the Union or its Member States as provided for in Article 136 of the Financial Regulation.

(6)It is necessary to allow for the payment of interest due for late payment on the basis of Article 116(5) of the Financial Regulation.

(7)The maximum Union contribution for the implementation of the actions under the European Innovation Council component of the Specific Programme in 2025 includes part of EFTA contribution which is fixed for 2025 as 2.75% of the appropriations.

(8)Pursuant to Article 62(1), first subparagraph, point (c), of the Financial Regulation indirect management is to be used for the implementation of the programme.

(9)In order to allow for flexibility in the implementation of the Work Programme, it is appropriate to allow changes which should not be considered substantial for the purposes of Article 110(5) of the Financial Regulation.

(10)The Work Programme was subject to input and advice of the European Innovation Council Board.

(11)The measures provided for in this Decision are in accordance with the opinion of the committee pursuant to Article 14 of Council Decision (EU) 2021/764.

HAS DECIDED AS FOLLOWS:

Article 1

The work programme

The annual financing decision, constituting the annual work programme for the implementation of the actions under the European Innovation Council component of the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe for the year 2025, as set out in the Annex to this decision, is adopted.

Article 2

Union contribution

The maximum Union contribution for the implementation of the actions under the European Innovation Council component of the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe is set for the year 2025 at EUR 1 419 478 375.00 and shall be financed from appropriations entered in the following line of the general budget of the Union for 2025:

(a)budget line 01.020301: EUR 1 419 478 375.00

The appropriations provided for in the first paragraph may also cover interest due for late payment.

The implementation of this Decision is subject to the availability of the appropriations provided for in the general budget of the Union for 2025, following the adoption of that budget by the budget authority or as provided for in the system of provisional twelfths.

The first paragraph of this Article is without prejudice to Union contributions in respect of transferred resources that are used for the benefit of a Member State in accordance with Article 15(5) of Regulation (EU) 2021/695, and which are financed from the appropriations entered in the following lines of the general budget of the Union:

(a)05.020900 — Horizon Europe — Contribution from the ERDF

(b)05.030700 — Horizon Europe — Contribution from the Cohesion Fund (CF).

Article 3

Methods of implementation and entrusted entities or persons

The implementation of the actions carried out by way of indirect management, as set out in the Annex, may be entrusted to the entities or persons referred to or selected in accordance with the criteria laid down in the Annex to this decision.

Article 4

Flexibility clause

Cumulated changes to the allocations to specific actions not exceeding 20% of the maximum Union contribution set in the first paragraph of Article 2 of this Decision shall not be considered to be substantial for the purposes of Article 110(5) of the Financial Regulation where those changes do not significantly affect the nature of the actions and the objective of the work programme.

The increase of the maximum Union contribution set in the first paragraph of Article 2 of this Decision shall not exceed 20%.

The authorising officer responsible may apply the changes referred to in the first paragraph. Those changes shall be applied in accordance with the principles of sound financial management and proportionality.

Article 5

Grants

Grants may be awarded without a call for proposals in accordance with the conditions set out in the Annex . Grants may be awarded to the bodies referred to in the Annex selected in accordance with the Annex .

Article 6

Security and public order

In accordance with Article 136(2) of the Financial Regulation, the actions set out in the Annex have been identified as affecting the security and public order of the Union or its Member States.

In accordance with Article 136(3) of the Financial Regulation, the authorising officer responsible may set specific conditions for the award procedures and for the resulting legal commitments. The specific conditions shall be strictly limited to what is necessary to protect security or public order of the Union and/or its Member States.

Done at Brussels, 29.10.2024

(1)    OJ L 2024/2509, 26.9.2024, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/2509/oj

(2)    OJ L 170, 12.5.2021, p. 1, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/695/oj.

(3)    OJ L 167I, 12.5.2021, p. 1.

(4)     www.sanctionsmap.eu   Note that the sanctions map is an IT tool for identifying the sanctions regimes. The source of the sanctions stems from legal acts published in the Official Journal (OJ). In case of discrepancy the OJ prevails.

EN

Annex

European Commission Decision C(2024) XXX of X October 2024
European Innovation Council (EIC)

Work Programme 2025

European Innovation Council (EIC) established by the European Commission, under the Horizon Europe programme (2021-27)

Who should read this document?

Table of Contents

I.    Introduction    

Strategic goals and Key Performance Indicators    

Overview of the 2025 Work Programme    

Key features of EIC support    

Outlook for 2026 and future years    

II.    EIC Pathfinder    

II.1    EIC Pathfinder Open    

II.2    EIC Pathfinder Challenges    

   II.2.1 Biotech for Climate Resilient Crops and Plant-Based Biomanufacturing    

   II.2.2 Generative-AI based Agents to Revolutionize Medical Diagnosis and Treatment of Cancer    

II.2.3 Towards autonomous robot collectives delivering collaborative tasks in dynamic unstructured construction environments    

   II.2.4 Waste-to-value devices: Circular production of renewable fuels, chemicals and materials    

III.    EIC Transition    

IV.    EIC Accelerator    

IV.1    EIC Accelerator Open    

IV.2    EIC Accelerator Challenges    

   IV.2.1 Acceleration of advanced materials development and upscaling along the value chain    

   IV.2.2 Biotechnology driven low emission food and feed production systems    

   IV.2.3 GenAI4EU: Creating European Champions in Generative AI    

IV.2.4 Innovative in-space servicing, operations, robotics and technologies for resilient EU space infrastructure    

   IV.2.5 Breakthrough innovations for future mobility    

V.    EIC Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale Up Call    

VI.    Business Acceleration Services    

VI.1 EIC business coaches (direct EIC services)    

VI.2 EIC Community and Women Leadership Programme    

VI.3 Investors’ Outreach Activities    

VI.4. Ecosystem Partnership Programme & promotion of ESG reporting    

VI.5 EIC Participation to trade fairs in 2026    

VI.6 Global Soft-landing programme    

VII.    EIC Prizes    

VII.1    The European Prize for Women Innovators    

VII.2    The European Capital of Innovation Awards (iCapital)    

VIII.    Other Actions    

VIII.1    Honoraria and expenses of the EIC Board    

VIII.2 External expertise for monitoring, ethics and policy advice    

VIII.3 Communication, outreach, events    

VIII.4    EIC Data management and IT systems integration    

VIII.5    Danish presidency conference    

VIII.6    Polish presidency conference    

VIII.7 Women TechEU initiative    

VIII.8     Expert Group on the EIC Plug in scheme    

VIII.9    Marketplace    

VIII.10 Fees for the European Investment Bank for tasks related to the investment component of the EIC Accelerator    

IX.    Annexes    

Annex 1    Estimated Indicative Budget    

Annex 2    General conditions    

Annex 3    Fast Track scheme to apply for the EIC Accelerator    

Annex 4    Pilot Plug-in scheme to apply for the EIC Accelerator    

Annex 5    Booster grants for EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition Awardees    

Annex 6    Additional provisions concerning Intellectual Property for EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition    

I.Introduction 

Strategic goals and Key Performance Indicators

The EIC was established to identify, develop and scale up breakthrough technologies and companies, which are critical for EU policies to achieve the green and digital transition and help ensure future open strategic autonomy in critical technologies.

The EIC Board provides strategic advice for the EIC Work Programme 1 . For the period 2021-27 the EIC Board has recommended six strategic goals, with associated Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), providing clear direction, track progress, and guide implementation and potential new actions. 2 The baselines and progress against KPI targets will be included in the annual EIC impact reports. The KPIs represent mid to long term targets.

Six Strategic Goals for the EIC:

1.To be the investor of choice for those with visionary ideas: The EIC must have continent-wide recognition and traction with high potential start-ups, entrepreneurs and innovative researchers, in particular from underrepresented groups such as women innovators and those from less developed ecosystems.

2.To crowd in EUR 30-50 billion investment into European deep tech 3 : The EIC must bridge a critical financing gap faced by deep tech companies and leverage the EIC Fund to influence the allocation of private assets in their support.

3.To pull through high-risk technologies in critical areas for society and open strategic autonomy: The EIC must take risks and support the most promising deep tech opportunities from the earliest stage to commercial scale-up, delivering relevant innovations for society and safeguarding against dependencies for key technologies.

4.To increase the number of European unicorns and scale ups: The EIC must support the growth and scaling up of European start-ups and SMEs to match and ultimately surpass the performance of the USA and Asia.

5.To catalyse innovation impacts from European public research and innovation: The EIC must build partnerships to draw on, and commercialise, the best ideas from the research base across the EU, and scale-up start-ups funded under other EU or national initiatives.

6.To achieve operational excellence: The agility and speed of EIC operations and decision making must align with the expectations of applicants, investors and market norms.

In addition, the EIC Board has published a set of recommendations to improve the participation of innovators from widening countries in the EIC. 4 The recommendations are taken forward in the implementation of the EIC Work Programme, for example in the outreach activities and selection of EIC experts and jury members.

Overview of the 2025 Work Programme

The funding and support available in 2025 is organised into four main funding schemes:

1.the EIC Pathfinder for advanced research to develop the scientific basis to underpin breakthrough technologies (Section II); 

2.the EIC Transition to validate technologies and develop business plans for specific applications (Section III); 

3.the EIC Accelerator to support companies (SMEs, start-ups, spin-offs and in some cases small mid-caps) to bring their innovations to market and scale them up (Section IV); and

4.the EIC Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale Up as this stems from the EU regulation establishing the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) 5 and Horizon Europe regulation 6 , which provides additional support to promising companies driving innovation in critical areas 7 (SMEs, start-ups, spin-offs and small mid-caps) to help them secure larger funding rounds for further scaling their businesses (Section V). 

In each case, the direct financial support to innovators is complemented with access to a range of Business Acceleration Services (Section VI) providing access to leading expertise, corporates, investors and ecosystem actors.

Pathfinder, Transition and Accelerator provide for “Open” funding which can support technologies and innovations in any field without any predefined priority areas. In the case of the Pathfinder and Accelerator, this Open funding is complemented by a set of “Challenges” which target specific technologies and innovations of strategic interest for the Union, including to support initiatives such as Net Zero Industry 8 , Critical Raw Materials 9 , the Chips Act 10 , and Health Emergency Responses 11 . The EIC STEP Scale Up call targets technologies and innovations within the fields of digital technologies, clean and resource efficient technologies, including net-zero technologies; and biotechnologies. Outside of the calls, a budget is also set aside to support follow on investments to companies selected under previous EIC Work Programmes.

In 2025, support for start-ups in semiconductor technologies and quantum technologies will be pursued in particular through the STEP Scale Up call which foresees larger investments targeting strategic technologies including in support of the Chips Act. The EIC Accelerator Open call remains available in general for startups and SMEs including for quantum and semiconductor technologies.

The Work Programme also supports a number of innovation prizes (Section VII), and additional supporting actions allowing the functioning of the EIC such as expert contracts, data management, communication and IT (Section VIII).

Linkages between these funding schemes will be maximised through proactive management (see below) and new approaches, such as additional ‘Booster’ grants to EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition projects (Annex 5), the Fast Track scheme to accelerate the access of successful projects from EU programmes to the EIC Accelerator (Annex 3) and the Plug in for access of projects stemming from national programmes (Annex 4).

In complement to the EIC Work Programme it is envisaged that the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2025 part on Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area (WIDERA), will introduce a pilot EIC Pre-Accelerator call to support early-stage deep tech startups to develop the technology, business and investment readiness to levels that would enable them to successfully apply and attract funding from EIC Accelerator or other sources. In anticipation of this call, the EIC Work Programme foresees the eligibility of beneficiaries under the Pre-Accelerator call for certain Business Acceleration Services and the Fast Track to the EIC Accelerator.

Table 1. Summary of main calls in 2025 12

Main changes of the 2025 Work Programme 

The 2025 Work Programme incorporates adjustments, improvements and simplifications compared to the 2024 Work Programme, following the recommendations of the EIC Board, the budget available and lessons learned during implementation.

A major development is the introduction of a EIC STEP Scaleup call to provide larger investments in companies to develop certain technologies (see Section V). This is introduced as a pilot call and has a number of novelties as described in the call text, including a shortened evaluation process and a link to complementary support from Venture Debt from InvestEU implementing partners.

Other specific changes include:

EIC Pathfinder:

ªAdditional emphasis on the potential solutions to be provided in applicants proposals for technology visions.

EIC Transition:

ªIncreased number of applicants to be invited to the jury interview phase and juries to recommend “GO reserve” for projects to be funded if additional budget becomes available.

ªSeal of Excellence will be awarded to all proposals that meet the evaluation thresholds but are not funded due to lack of available budget (previously only for mono-beneficiary SME proposals). If the proposal is submitted by consortia, the Seal of Excellence will be awarded to the coordinator of the proposal, listing the other participating legal entities.

EIC Accelerator:

ªThe maximum investment component is reduced from EUR 15 million to EUR 10 million (investments amounts above EUR 10 million available under the STEP call)

ªClarification that applications must have completed all elements of Technology Readiness Level 5. The evaluation of short proposals (Step 1) will be batched on a monthly basis with results within 4-6 weeks.

ªFor proposals submitted through the Open and Challenges Calls, unanimous approval in case of consensus meetings is required for a jury interview invitation.

ªClarifications that proposals with nuclear applications are eligible in the case of the EIC Accelerator.

Key features of EIC support

A combination of financial and non-financial support to accelerate and grow EIC innovations and companies.

The EIC support goes far beyond funding, and it aims at supporting the emergence, acceleration and growth of EIC innovations and deep tech companies. In order to further leverage the EIC investments, all EIC Awardees will be provided with access to a range of externally contracted, bespoke Business Acceleration Services (BAS) at any stage of development of their activities. The EIC uses its pan-European reach to connect EIC Awardees with partners from all around Europe and beyond, thereby also contributing to further develop the innovation ecosystem in Europe by providing access to and from a deal flow of top-level European innovators.

Proactive project and portfolio management by EIC Programme Managers

Support awarded by the EIC, and in particular by the EIC Pathfinder, is more than a one-off funding of a research project. By covering the full innovation cycle, whenever possible EIC aims to push results to higher Technology Readiness Levels (TRL). Whilst EIC Pathfinder Awardees will bear no obligation regarding the development of innovations as part of their project (beyond the evaluated proposal), the EIC will encourage and stimulate further maturation of preliminary findings and results by providing guidance as well as additional and continuous support, including financial one.

Moreover, EIC takes a proactive approach of project and programme management, performed by EIC Programme Managers, 13 to identify, develop and implement such technology visions and to nurture potential market-creating innovations out of EIC funded projects and activities. Proactive management applies to EIC Pathfinder Challenges, EIC Transition and EIC Accelerator projects and consists of the following:

ªThe milestones defined by the proposals for funding will be used to periodically review the progress. Reviews will assess whether the activities foreseen to reach the milestones have been completed and will consider the results and outputs against the overall objectives. The reviews will be undertaken with support of independent experts and overseen by EIC Programme Managers for projects within their portfolios.

ªFollowing the reviews, the EIC support may be continued on the basis of its implementation according to the description of action, amendments to the grant agreements may be requested or, in case a project has not met agreed milestones, it may be suspended/terminated. It can be even terminated if it has completely lost economic or technological relevance (in accordance with the grant agreement). Reviews may also result in requests for amendments to ongoing or planned activities or deployment of some necessary Business Acceleration Services (or other relevant ones, like those from EIT-KICs), including additional coaching days and access to crucial expertise. For EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition projects, reviews may also involve an assessment to submit a proposal directly to the EIC Accelerator under the Fast Track scheme (see Annex 3) or to submit a proposal for additional Booster grants (see Annex 5). In addition to the reviews, the EIC Awardees will be expected to keep the Agency regularly informed of progress and pre-alerted in case of difficulties.

ªThe EIC funded projects may be included in one or more thematic or Challenge-based portfolios of projects (‘EIC Portfolios’), providing the projects with a productive setting in which to advance their ideas. For EIC Challenges, the portfolio will reflect the scope of the challenge (“Challenge Portfolio”). Projects to be funded through EIC Open calls may be requested to join one or more Thematic Portfolios.

ªProjects selected under EIC Pathfinder Challenges will work together with Programme Managers and pursue together as a portfolio a common roadmap for the Challenge. This roadmap is prepared under the guidance of the EIC programme Manager and sets out collective activities, objectives and milestones. In order to take into account relevant changes in science and innovation or the portfolio’s achievements or consistency, the objectives and roadmap of an EIC Challenge Portfolio must regularly be assessed and if necessary, revised. Based on any such revision, the Agency may request to amend the projects’ activities, milestones and deliverables in accordance with the grant agreement. If a project has been selected under an EIC Challenge topic, and where no amendment can be agreed upon to ensure coherence with the updated objectives of the related Challenge Portfolio, the Agency may suspend or terminate the project in accordance with the grant agreement.

ªEIC portfolio activities are identified and developed by EIC Programme Managers in consultation with the EIC Awardees of the projects in the EIC Portfolio, with relevant Commission services and where appropriate with other interested EIC Community members and third parties such as members of the innovation ecosystem. They aim at developing cooperation within an EIC Portfolio in order to achieve its objectives, enhance research, prepare transition to innovation and stimulate business opportunities understanding and enhancing of regulatory framework, and strengthen the EIC Community. Such activities may cover participation to conferences, workshops or meetings, experience and data sharing, and participation to any relevant Business Acceleration Services events.

A tailored approach to proposal evaluation

The EIC approach to the evaluation of proposals is tailored to the objectives of each of the EIC funding schemes. For the most mature technologies, when business and market readiness levels are close to market funding, greater emphasis is put on interviews with applicants and a simplified binary scoring (GO/ NO GO).

For the EIC Pathfinder, which supports science-towards-technology breakthrough research, the evaluation follows a peer review method where proposals are evaluated, scored and ranked by experts based on weighted criteria and thresholds (see Section II).

For the EIC Transition, which funds innovation activities that go beyond the experimental proof of concept, proposals will first be evaluated remotely, scored, and ranked based on criteria and thresholds. For the top ranked applicants which are invited to the interview, the jury will decide based on a binary scoring (GO/NO GO, see Section III).

For the EIC Accelerator, which supports high risk/high gain innovations to go to the market and scale up, proposals will be evaluated remotely and at interviews based on a binary scoring (GO/NO GO) 14 (see Section IV).

For the EIC STEP Scale Up, which supports promising companies developing critical technologies 15 , including those with prior EIC support, to help them secure larger funding rounds for further scaling their businesses (see Section V).

Policy of open access and Intellectual Property rights 16

For the EIC Pathfinder, provisions will be applied to ensure open access to scientific publications and promote the uptake of research results (see Annex 2 on open science).

Moreover, EIC aims to stimulate the cross-fertilisation and exploitation of results from EIC supported projects. Therefore, EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition projects may be requested at any stage by EIC Programme Managers to actively share information about results (including preliminary findings), within their EIC Portfolio and with other relevant EIC projects and parties, as detailed in Annex 6. The goal is to stimulate and nurture potential innovation out of EIC Pathfinder or EIC Transition results and explore pathways to further development. This exchange of information between EIC Awardees will be without prejudice to their own legitimate interests to exploit the results or findings. To ensure full confidentiality, such sharing will be subject to non-disclosure obligations regarding confidential results, with EIC Awardees retaining the right on a case-by-case basis to fully disclose or not their intellectual property.

Technology transfer and other relevant support is expected to be provided by universities and research organisations for exploiting the results of EIC projects. In the absence of such support and without prejudice to ownership of results, the inventors of results generated by EIC Pathfinder and Transition projects may be entrusted with appropriate access rights for the purpose of further development and exploitation. Exploitation activities may be eligible to additional financial support and services offered by the EIC, as further detailed in Annex 5.

Economic security

Following the Communication on the European Economic Security Strategy 17 and the Commission Recommendation on critical technology areas for the EU's economic security 18  a number of provisions have been made to protect Europe from economic security risks.

These measures are:

·Eligibility criteria: In line with Article 136 of the Financial Regulation 19 , where necessary and duly justified, legal entities which are directly or indirectly controlled by a non-eligible third country or by a legal entity established in a non-eligible third country cannot participate as recipients 20 . This restriction is exceptionally applied and justified in order to protect the Union’s strategic assets, interests, or security also taking into account the technological objectives and expected outcomes under the following calls:

ospecific Challenges under the EIC Accelerator relating to artificial intelligence and space (see Section IV);

othe STEP scale up call which supports strategic areas in Digital technologies and deep tech, Clean and resource efficient technologies, Biotechnologies (see Section V).

·Investment safeguards: The inclusion of economic security safeguards in investment agreements by the EIC Fund for companies selected to receive an investment component under the EIC Accelerator, if this is deemed necessary, in order to safeguard the Union’s strategic assets, interests, autonomy, or security and to achieve technological objectives and expected outcomes for companies selected under the EIC STEP Scale up call as well as within the four priority technology areas defined in the Commission Recommendation on critical technology areas, namely: advanced semiconductors technologies, artificial intelligence technologies, quantum technologies and biotechnologies. The different possible safeguards are described in the EIC Fund Investment Guidelines and will be tailored to each specific investee. Where the need for such safeguard measures is identified in the Commission Single Award Decision, the EIC Fund Manager will apply at least one of the safeguard measures in the investment agreement. The assessment by the Commission of the need for safeguard measures to be identified in the Award Decision will take account of EU policy developments on economic security, including the application of safeguards in the main Horizon Europe work programmes (such as those implemented under Article 22.5 of the Horizon Europe Regulation).

·Intellectual Property: A requirement exists in the grant agreement for all EIC beneficiaries to inform the Agency in cases where the Intellectual Property generated by EIC projects is proposed to be transferred to an entity in a non-associated third country.

Details of the above economic security measures are provided in the call texts below.

EIC investments

The requirements concerning the list of non-cooperative jurisdictions (as amended from time to time) for tax purposes issued by the Council (OJ C 438, 19.12.2017, p. 5) (the "Council Conclusions") are applied by the EIC in respect of EIC Accelerator investments.

The EIC Fund shall not enter into any contract or maintain a business relationship with any institution or individual listed on sanction lists, 21 and in particular shall not make any funds available directly or indirectly to any institution or individual listed in sanction lists 22 . 

The EIC applies the EU rules, policies and procedures, addressing the requirements in respect of money laundering, terrorism financing, tax avoidance, tax fraud, tax evasion contained in Article 158(2)(a) of the Financial Regulation 23 and complies with the prohibition to enter into new or renewed operations with entities incorporated or established in jurisdictions listed under the relevant Union policy on non-cooperative jurisdictions or that are identified as high-risk third countries 24 or that do not effectively comply with Union or internationally agreed tax standards on transparency and exchange of information, as well as the possibility to derogate from this requirement when the action is physically implemented in one of those jurisdictions, contained in Article 158(2)(b) of the Financial Regulation 25 .

The breach of these obligations may lead to the interruption of the equity investment process.

EIC-EIT Collaboration

The EIC is progressively increasing collaboration and synergies with the EIT and its Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) with the overall aim of strengthening the European Innovation Ecosystem. A number of collaboration areas are already in place and will continue to be supported under the current Work Programme facilitating the access to services to European innovators. The Fast Track process by EIT KICs, that allows proposals from companies selected by the EIT KICs to enter the EIC Accelerator evaluation at the second stage will continue in 2025; EIC beneficiaries will have access to the services provided by the EIT KICs via the partnerships agreed with the Business Acceleration Services. The “Next Generation Innovation Talents” scheme allows EIT Label Masters and Doctoral programmes, EIT Alumni, EIT Jumpstarter beneficiaries to undertake secondments in EIC and EIT supported startups and SMEs. Collaboration will continue to promote women entrepreneurs, with EIT access to the EIC Women Leadership Programme and a joint approach to the women innovator’s prizes (see Section VII).

Outlook for 2026 and future years

The EIC Work Programme for 2026 will be prepared following the advice provided by the EIC Board. It is envisaged that the main calls on Pathfinder, Transition and Accelerator will continue without major changes. The experience with the STEP scale up call will be assessed with a view to the continuation and improvement of this support. The identification of the challenges will draw from the insights of the EIC Programme Managers and reflect the EU policy priorities. Changes or pilot actions may be considered following the mid-term review of Horizon Europe.

Glossary 26

The Agency entrusted by the European Commission with the implementation of Horizon Europe EIC activities, except for the EIC Fund, is the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA).

Deep tech 27 is technology that is based on cutting-edge scientific advances and discoveries and is characterised by the need to stay at the technological forefront by constant interaction with new ideas and results from the lab. Deep tech innovations are understood to be those that have the potential to deliver transformative solutions, rooted in cutting-edge science, technology and engineering, including innovation that combines advances in the physical, biological and digital spheres. Deep tech is distinct from ‘high tech’ which tends to refer only to R&D intensity 28 . 

The EIC Board oversees the strategy and implementation of EIC activities and provides advice on EIC Work Programmes. It comprises 20 leading innovators and innovative researchers, as well as a full time President of the EIC Board. The EIC Board is appointed by the European Commission following an open call for expressions of interest. The EIC Board members are subject to strict rules concerning conflicts of interest and confidentiality.

The EIC Awardees or EIC recipients are the beneficiaries identified in an EIC Grant agreement (Pathfinder, Transition and Accelerator), or investees (for EIC Accelerator including EIC Step Scale-up Call), as well as winners of EIC Prizes. The Horizon Europe model grant agreements and contracts are available on the EU Funding and Tenders portal 29 .

EIC Business Acceleration Services (BAS) are support services provided to the EIC Awardees and other eligible organisations as defined in Section VI to support the innovation development of EIC project results and the commercialisation and scaling up of EIC supported innovations, including access to coaches and training, access to services of the EIC Ecosystem Partners, and access to global partners (leading corporates, investors, procurers, distributors, clients), see Section V for more detail.

EIC business coaches are independent external experts with entrepreneurial and investment backgrounds who provide business development insights and guidance to EIC Awardees and applicants. They are part of the Business Acceleration Services.

EIC Community platform is a platform available to all EIC Awardees and Awardees of EIC Seals of Excellence 30 , EIC Pre-accelerator Seals of Excellence and EIC Sovereignty (STEP) Seals  31 , facilitating links to Business Acceleration Services as well as enabling discussions, exchanges and match making. The EIC Community platform is a virtual meeting place where EIC Awardees can connect with peer inventors, researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs as well as other actors from the ecosystem, including corporates, investors, business angels, mentors and coaches, innovation procurers, innovation agencies, business associations, clusters, accelerators, incubators, technology transfer offices and many more.

EIC Ecosystem Partners are organisations that have been selected to provide Business Acceleration Services or other support to EIC Awardees. EIC Ecosystem Partners can include, for example, investors, business angels, mentors and coaches, innovation agencies, business associations, clusters, accelerators, incubators, technology transfer offices, venture builders, etc. They may also include the Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) of the EIT, members of the Enterprise Europe Network and Startup Europe, and the European IP Helpdesk.

EIC Expert Evaluators are external independent experts in their field who assess proposals for funding against the criteria defined in the Work Programme. The EIC expert evaluators are selected from the EU Funding & Tenders portal Expert Database.

EIC expert monitors are external independent experts in their field who assist the Agency and, in some cases, EIC Programme Managers in the monitoring of projects’ implementation.

EIC evaluation committees are panels of EIC expert evaluators who evaluate proposals and rank those that have passed the applicable thresholds. In the case of EIC Pathfinder Challenges, EIC Programme Managers participate as members in some evaluation committees as specified in the call texts.

The EIC Fund is an alternative investment fund (AIF) that has been established for the specific purpose of investing in companies selected through EIC Accelerator calls. An external alternative investment fund manager (AIFM, the “EIC Fund Manager”) manages the EIC Fund. The European Investment Bank (EIB) supports the EIC Fund as Investment Advisor.

The EIC Fund Manager makes investment and divestment decisions on the companies selected through the EIC Accelerator call by following a due diligence performed by the EIB according to the EIC Investment Guidelines . 32 The EIC Fund Manager manages the EIC portfolio of invested companies, supported by the EIB, and in close coordination with the grant support provided to investee companies by the European Commission and managed by the Agency, as well as the provision of Business Acceleration Services (including access to other potential investors via the EIC Co-Investment Platform) and the performance of technology due diligence by the Agency.

The EIC Forum brings different innovation drivers and levels of governance closer together to discuss openly and informally relevant policy issues. 33 The policy recommendations and activities of the EIC Forum will aim at supporting and complementing initiatives undertaken in Horizon Europe.

EIC Juries are panels of specifically selected EIC expert evaluators (including, for example, independent investors, business angels and entrepreneurs) who conduct face to face interviews with applicants to the EIC Transition, EIC Accelerator and EIC STEP Scaleup calls as part of the evaluation procedure. EIC Programme Managers and, in the case of the EIC Accelerator representatives of the EIB as Investment Adviser to the EIC Fund, may participate in jury interviews as observers, but will not be members of the jury and will not take part in the jury’s decisions. Interviews with EIC Juries may take place in either a physical or virtual setting.

Marketplace is due to be developed as an EIC-dedicated space supported by the Horizon Results Platform, where results on the EIC Pathfinder and Transition projects will be made available in order to cross-fertilise activities and stimulate and nurture potential innovation. The Marketplace is expected to become available during 2025.

EIC Portfolio is a set of actions presenting thematic similarities (Thematic Portfolio) or contributing to the same EIC Challenge (Challenge Portfolio). Further information can be found in the proactive project and portfolio management by EIC Programme Managers section. EIC Programme Managers are high-level experts in specific fields of technology, business and innovation and who manage one or more EIC Portfolios. They are appointed to work in the Agency for a limited duration, in order to develop visions for breakthrough technologies and innovations, and to proactively manage portfolios of projects to achieve these breakthroughs. They are supported by EIC Project Officers as well as by EIC Tech to Market advisers. The EIC Programme Managers are subject to strict rules concerning conflicts of interest and confidentiality.

EIC Tech to Market Advisers are agents employed by the Agency to assist primarily the EIC Transition projects, in agreement with EIC Programme Managers and in cooperation with EIC Project Officers, with the design and the execution of the transition plan and to facilitate access to, and follow-up of, the relevant Business Acceleration Service offerings.

EIC Project Officers are officials and other agents appointed by the Agency to manage an action.

The Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) is a network of business intermediary organisations (chambers of commerce, technology poles, innovation support organisations, universities and research institutes, regional development organisations) that help Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) innovate and grow internationally.

National Contact Points (NCPs) are appointed by Member States and Associated Countries to provide guidance, practical information and assistance to applicants on all aspects of participation in Horizon Europe.

Next Generation Innovation Talents scheme supports EU funded researchers (from European Innovation Council (EIC), European Research Council (ERC), European Institute of Technology (EIT), Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions (MSCA) to carry out an innovation internship in a startup funded by the EIC or EIT. The aim is on the one hand to enable researchers and aspiring innovators to better understand and gain direct experience of real-world innovation and entrepreneurship while allowing innovative start-ups to access new ideas and insights from cutting edge of research.

Seal of Excellence: is a quality label awarded to excellent proposals which could not be funded due to lack of available budget and meeting the conditions set out in the call text, in order to facilitate access to funding from other sources 34 . Awardees of the Seal of Excellence also have access to Business Acceleration Services. Member States may decide to transfer budget from European Regional Development Programmes to the Agency to fund directly Seal of Excellence proposals.

Sovereignty (STEP) Seal: is awarded to all proposals that meet the evaluation thresholds in calls contributing to the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP). It concerns both those proposals selected for funding (to support access to complementary funding sources) and those not selected for funding due to a lack of budget (to support access to alternative funding sources). It provides access to Business Acceleration Services. For proposals not selected for funding, Member States may decide to transfer budget from European Regional Development Fund Programmes to the Agency to fund directly Sovereignty (STEP) Seal proposals.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) is a category of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. It consists of enterprises that employ fewer than 250 persons and have either an annual turnover not exceeding EUR 50 million, or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding EUR 43 million. A full definition is provided in Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC. 35 Under the EIC, this category includes start-ups.

Small mid-cap means an enterprise employing up to 499 employees. 36

Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) provide a guide to the stage of development. TRLs are used in the Work Programme for guidance, but do not preclude support for non-technological innovations. A strong degree of importance will also be given to market readiness and business readiness, 37 as described in the award criteria of the call texts. The following definitions of TRLs apply, recognising that there are important differences between technological fields: 38

TRL1 - Basic principles observed

TRL2 - Technology concept formulated

TRL3 - Experimental proof of concept

TRL4 - Technology validated in lab

TRL5 - Technology validated in relevant environment (industrially relevant environment in the case of key enabling technologies)

TRL6 - Technology demonstrated in relevant environment (industrially relevant environment in the case of key enabling technologies)

TRL7 - System prototype demonstration in operational environment

TRL8 - System complete and qualified

TRL9 - Actual system proven in operational environment (competitive manufacturing in the case of key enabling technologies, or in space)

Women-led SMEs (including start-ups) means companies where the position of either the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Technology Officer (CTO) or Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) is held by a woman at the time of application, interview and award of the EU financial support.

Women-led consortia means consortia where the consortium coordinator is a woman and at least 50% of Work Package leaders, including the consortium coordinator, are women at the time of application, interview and award of the EU financial support.

II.EIC Pathfinder

The overall objective of the EIC Pathfinder for advanced research is to develop the scientific basis to underpin breakthrough technologies. It provides support for the earliest stages of scientific, technological or deep-tech research and development. Pathfinder projects aim to build on new, cutting-edge directions in science and technology to disrupt a field and a market or create new opportunities by realising innovative technological solutions through:

ª‘EIC Pathfinder Open’, open to support projects in any field of science, technology or application without predefined thematic priorities.

ª‘EIC Pathfinder Challenges’ to support coherent portfolios of projects within predefined thematic areas with the aim to achieve specific objectives for each Challenge.

II.1    EIC Pathfinder Open

ªDo you have an ambitious vision for a novel future technology that could make a real difference to our lives?

ªDo you see a plausible way of achieving the scientific breakthrough that will make this technology possible?

ªCan you imagine collaborating with an interdisciplinary team of researchers and innovators to validate the scientific basis of the future technology, realise a proof of principle, and explore paths to impact?

If the answer to each one of these questions is ‘yes’, then EIC Pathfinder Open may be the right call for you.

Why should you apply?

You should apply if you are looking for support from EIC Pathfinder Open to realise an ambitious vision for radically new technology, with potential to create new markets and/or to provide solutions for global challenges. EIC Pathfinder Open supports early-stage development of such future technologies (e.g., various activities at low Technology Readiness Levels from 1 to 4), based on high-risk/high-gain science-towards-technology breakthrough research (including ‘deep-tech’). This research must provide the foundations of the technology you are envisioning.

EIC Pathfinder Open may support your work, especially if it is highly risky: you may set out to try things that will not work; you may be faced with questions that nobody knows the answer to yet; you may realise that there are many aspects of the problem that you do not master. On the contrary, if the approach you want to follow is incremental by nature or known, EIC Pathfinder Open will not support you.

Before applying to this call, you should verify that your proposal meets all the following essential characteristics (‘Gatekeepers’):

ªConvincing long-term vision of a radically new technology that has the potential to have a transformative positive effect to solving a challenge in our economy and society.

ªConcrete, novel and ambitious science-towards-technology breakthrough, providing advancement towards the envisioned technology.

ªHigh-risk/high-gain research approach and methodology, with concrete and plausible objectives.

EIC Pathfinder Open involves interdisciplinary research and development. By bringing diverse areas of research together, often with different perspectives, terminologies and methodologies, within individual projects and within a portfolio of projects, really new things can be generated, and entirely new areas of research can be opened up. It is up to you to compose the team that you need, that you can learn from, and that you can move forward with.

The expected output of your project is the proof of principle that the main ideas of the envisioned future technology are feasible, thus validating its scientific and technological basis. Project results should include top-level scientific publications in open access. While your vision is expected to be worthwhile because of its potential for future impact, for instance to create new markets, improve our lives, or provide solutions for global challenges, these are not expected to be achieved in the course of your EIC Pathfinder Open project. However, you are expected to take the necessary measures in the course of the project to allow future uptake to take place. This includes:  an adequate formal protection of the generated Intellectual Property (IP) 39 , a plan for future exploitation and an assessment of relevant aspects related to regulation, certification, and standardisation.

In addition, you are encouraged to involve and empower in your team key actors that have the potential to become future leaders in their field such as excellent early-career researchers or promising high-tech SMEs, including start-ups. Your project should reinforce their mind-set for targeted research and development aimed at high impact applied results. This will strengthen Europe’s capacity for exploiting the scientific discoveries made in Europe throughout the steps to market success or for solving global challenges. You are particularly encouraged to empower female researchers in your project and to achieve gender balance among your work package leaders.

Can you apply?

This call is open for collaborative research. Your proposal must be submitted by the coordinator, on behalf of a consortium including as beneficiaries, at least three legal entities, independent from each other and each established in a different country as follows:

ªat least one legal entity established in a Member State; and

ªat least two other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries.

The legal entities may for example be universities, research organisations, SMEs, start-ups, industrial partners or natural persons. The eligibility of associated countries and third countries is detailed in Annex 2.

The standard admissibility and eligibility conditions are detailed in Annex 2. The scope of proposals should be in line with the Do No Significant Harm principle (see Annex 2). Research proposals within the scope of Annex I to the Euratom Treaty, namely those directed towards nuclear energy applications, must be submitted to relevant calls under the Euratom Research and Training Programme.

Applications with elements that concern the evolution of European communication networks (5G, post-5G and other technologies linked to the evolution of European communication networks) will be subject to restriction for the protection of European communication networks (see Annex II – Section B1)

What support will you receive if your proposal is funded?

The total indicative budget for this call is EUR 142 million. 

You will receive a grant for a Research and Innovation Action to cover the eligible costs, necessary for the implementation of your project. For this call, the EIC considers proposals with a requested EU contribution of up to EUR 3 million as appropriate. Nonetheless, this does not preclude you to request larger amounts, if duly justified. The funding rate of this grant will be 100% of the eligible costs.

In addition to funding, successful applicants will receive tailor-made access to a wide range of Business Acceleration Services (see Section V) and interactions with EIC Programme Managers (see Section I).

Projects funded through EIC Pathfinder (including grants resulting from certain EIC pilot Pathfinder, FET-Open and Proactive calls) 40  may be eligible:

ªto receive Booster grants of a fixed amount not exceeding EUR 50 000 to undertake complementary activities to explore potential pathways to commercialisation or for portfolio activities (see Annex 5);

ªto submit an EIC Transition proposal (see section III for more information about the eligibility conditions);

ªto submit an EIC Accelerator proposal via the Fast Track scheme (see Annex 3); 

ªto participate in the ‘Next Generation Innovation Talents’ scheme (described in the glossary). The personnel costs of researchers participating in this scheme are eligible under your Pathfinder grants.

The Model Grant Agreement 41 can be found on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal.

How do you apply; how long does it take?

The deadline for submitting your proposal is 21/05/2025 at 17h00 Brussels local time. 42

You must submit your proposal via the EU Funding & Tenders Portal before the deadline.

Sections 1 to 3 of the part B of your proposal, corresponding respectively to the award criteria Excellence, Impact, and Quality and Efficiency of the Implementation, must consist of a maximum of 20 format A4 pages.

You will be informed about the outcome of the evaluation within 5 months from the call deadline (indicative) and, if your proposal is selected for funding, you can expect your grant agreement to be signed by 8 months after the call deadline (indicative).

How does the EIC decide if your proposal will be funded?

Your proposal will be first evaluated and scored individually by at least four EIC expert evaluators with respect to the award criteria. The score for each award criterion will be the median of the evaluators’ scores. The overall score from this individual evaluation phase will be the weighted sum of the three median scores from the three award criteria.

The evaluation committee, which will be composed of EIC expert evaluators different than those who evaluated the proposals individually, will decide on the final score on the basis of the score from the individual evaluation phase and the outcome of its consensus discussions. The evaluation committee may invite expert evaluators who evaluated and scored the proposals individually to the consensus discussions, in particular to clarify diverging evaluators’ opinions.

The Evaluation Summary Report will comprise the final score, a collation of the comments from individual reports, or extracts of them, a comment that summarises the assessment by the evaluation committee as well as any additional comments, possibly including advice not to resubmit the proposal.

Proposals will be assessed according to the following award criteria (Table 2):

For proposals with the same final score, priority will be based on the following factors, in order: higher score under the criterion Excellence; higher score under the criterion Impact; gender balance among the work package leaders as identified in the proposal; number of applicants that are SMEs; number of Member States and Associated Countries represented in the consortium; other factors related to the objectives of the call to be determined by the evaluation committee.

II.2    EIC Pathfinder Challenges 

EIC Pathfinder Challenges aim to build on new, cutting-edge directions in science and technology to disrupt a field and a market or create new opportunities by realising innovative technological solutions grounded in high-risk/high-gain research and development.

With each specific Challenge, a portfolio of projects will be established that explore different perspectives, competing approaches or complementary aspects of the Challenge. The complexity and high-risk nature of this research will require multi-disciplinary collaborations.

A dedicated Programme Manager, who establishes a common roadmap and proactively steers the portfolio towards the goals of each Challenge, oversees a specific EIC Pathfinder Challenge. Projects in a Challenge portfolio are expected to interact and exchange, remaining flexible and reactive in the light of developments within the portfolio or in the relevant global scientific or industrial community. They will progress together towards common goals and create new opportunities for radical innovation.

This section refers to common criteria for all EIC Pathfinder Challenges. Please refer to the description below of each Challenge for specific information and requirements.

Why should you apply?

You should apply if you have a potential cutting-edge project that would contribute to the specific objectives of the respective Challenge. Specifically, your proposed project must aim to deliver by its end the expected outcomes defined in the respective Challenge. In general, the starting point of a proposal answering to a Pathfinder Challenge is early TRL (e.g., 2) to up to proof of concept or validation in the lab (e.g., TRL 3 or 4). Project results should also include top-level scientific publications, adequate formal protection of the generated intellectual property (IP) as well as an assessment of relevant aspects related to regulation, certification and standardisation.

In addition, you are encouraged to involve and empower in your team key actors that have the potential to become future leaders in their fields such as excellent early-career researchers or promising high-tech SMEs, including start-ups. Your proposed project should reinforce the mind-set for targeted research and development aimed at high-impact applied results. This will strengthen Europe’s capacity for exploiting the scientific discoveries made in Europe throughout the steps to market success or for solving global challenges. You are particularly encouraged to empower female researchers in your project and to achieve gender balance among your work package leaders.

Before you decide to apply, you are strongly encouraged to read the respective EIC Pathfinder Challenge Guide that will be published on the EIC website and the Funding & Tenders Portal after the call opening. The Challenge Guide will provide you with more information about the objectives of the Challenges, technical information underpinning the objectives and portfolio considerations used for the final selection of proposals to be funded.

Can you apply?

In order to apply, your proposal must meet the general eligibility requirements (see Annex 2) as well as specific eligibility requirements for the Challenge (if applicable). Please check for particular elements (e.g., specific application focus or technology) in the respective Challenge chapter below.

The EIC Pathfinder Challenges support collaborative or individual research and innovation from consortia or from single legal entities established in a Member State or an Associated Country (unless stated otherwise in the specific Challenge chapter). In case of a consortium your proposal must be submitted by the coordinator on behalf of the consortium. Consortia of two entities must be comprised of independent legal entities from two different Member States or Associated Countries. Consortia of three or more entities must include as beneficiaries at least three legal entities, independent from each other and each established in a different country as follows:

ªat least one legal entity established in a Member State; and

ªat least two other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries.

The legal entities may for example be universities, research organisations, SMEs, start-ups, natural persons. In the case of single beneficiary projects, mid-caps and larger companies will not be permitted.

Applications with elements that concern the evolution of European communication networks (5G, post-5G and other technologies linked to the evolution of European communication networks) will be subject to restriction for the protection of European communication networks (see Annex II – Section B1).

The standard admissibility and eligibility conditions and the eligibility of applicants from third countries are detailed in Annex 2.

The scope of proposals should be in line with the Do No Significant Harm principle (see Annex 2).

What support will you receive if your proposal is funded?

The total indicative budget for this call is EUR 120 million which is expected to be allocated in approximately equal shares across the Challenges.

You will receive a grant for a Research and Innovation Action to cover the eligible costs, necessary for the implementation of your project, including the portfolio activities. For this call, the EIC considers proposals with an EU contribution of up to EUR 4 million as appropriate. Nonetheless, this does not preclude you to request larger amounts, if duly justified or stated otherwise in the specific Challenge. 

The funding rate of this grant will be 100% of the eligible costs. Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum and the amount will be determined during the evaluation process. Applicants must therefore propose the amount of the lump sum based on their estimated project costs as defined in the Decision of 7 July 2021 authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025). 43 It is advised to include a work package dedicated to portfolio activities and allocate at least 10 person-month to it.

In addition to funding, successful applicants will receive tailor-made access to a wide range of Business Acceleration Services (see Section V) and interactions with EIC Programme Managers and other actions in the portfolio of projects selected (see Section I).

Projects funded through EIC Pathfinder (including grants resulting from certain EIC pilot Pathfinder, FET-Open and Proactive calls) 44  may be eligible:

ªto receive Booster grants of a fixed amount not exceeding EUR 50 000 to undertake complementary activities to explore potential pathways to commercialisation or for portfolio activities (see Annex 5);

ªto submit an EIC Transition proposal (see Section III for more information about the eligibility conditions);

ªto submit an EIC Accelerator proposal via the Fast Track scheme (see Annex 3); 

ªto participate in the ‘Next Generation Innovation Talents’ scheme (described in the glossary). The personnel costs of researchers participating in this scheme are eligible under your EIC Pathfinder grant agreements.

The Model Grant Agreement can be found on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal.

How do you apply; how long does it take?

The call deadline for submitting your proposal is 29/10/2025 at 17h00 Brussels local time.  45

You must submit your proposal via the EU Funding & Tenders Portal before the deadline.

Sections 1 to 3 of the part B of your proposal, corresponding respectively to the award criteria Excellence, Impact, and Quality and Efficiency of the Implementation, must consist of a maximum of 30 format A4 pages.

You will be informed about the outcome of the evaluation by 5 months after call deadline (indicative), and, if your proposal is accepted for funding, you can expect your grant agreement to be signed by 8 months after the call deadline (indicative).

How does the EIC decide if your proposal will be funded?

After the submission of your proposal, it will be evaluated in two steps:

1.The EIC expert evaluators will assess each proposal separately against the award criteria and the EIC evaluation committee will ensure consistency across scores.

2.The EIC evaluation committee will consider all proposals passing the first step together in order to assess the best portfolio of projects to achieve the specific objectives of the Challenge (so called portfolio considerations). The evaluation committee will be composed of EIC expert evaluators and EIC Programme Managers.

Step1 (assessment of each proposal separately):

Your proposal will be first evaluated and scored individually by at least three EIC expert evaluators with respect to the award criteria. After the individual evaluation, these evaluators will get together in a consensus group to agree on a common position on comments and scores.

After the consensus Phase, the evaluation committee will check consistency across the evaluation of each individual proposal and finalise the scores and comments for all proposals.

For step 1, proposals will be assessed according to the following award criteria (Table 3).

All proposals that meet the thresholds defined in the award criteria will be considered in step 2.

Step 2 (portfolio considerations):

In step 2, the evaluation committee will consider each proposal’s contribution to setting up a consistent Challenge Portfolio of projects.

First, the evaluation committee will map the proposals in a number of categories stemming from the overall goal and specific objectives of the Challenge. Examples of possible categories are: building blocks or subsystems, technical areas and/or competing technologies, platforms, applications areas, risk level and stage of technology readiness level, size, etc.

Following this mapping of proposals against categories, a suitable portfolio of proposals will be selected by the evaluation committee by applying portfolio considerations in order to propose for funding a coherent set of projects that will achieve the expected outcomes and impacts of the Challenge and maximise their impact.

Further information and details about the categories and the portfolio considerations will be provided in EIC Pathfinder Challenge Guides 46 , which will be topic and domain specific.

The evaluation committee may also propose some minor adjustments to the proposals as far as needed for the consistency of the portfolio approach. These adjustments will be in conformity with the conditions for participation and comply with the principle of equal treatment.

You will receive feedback in the Evaluation Summary Report which will comprise the final score and the comments endorsed by the evaluation committee as well as any additional comments. If your proposal was either retained for funding or not retained for funding while it received a score that was higher than other proposals retained for funding under the same Challenge, then you will also be informed about the underlying portfolio considerations. Comments on the detailed lump sum budget table will be provided in the Evaluation Summary Report only for proposals invited to grant agreement preparation or placed in the reserve list or rejected (possibly in part) due to significant overestimation or underestimation of costs.

What happens after a proposal is evaluated and retained for funding?

The applicant/coordinator of the proposal will receive a letter announcing the proposal has been retained for funding and the next steps regarding grant agreement signature. Grant agreement preparation and signature is expected to be completed within three months, but shorter timelines may be specified.

The EIC Project Officer and relevant EIC Programme Manager will contact applicants and provide support during the grant agreement preparation to plan the portfolio activities which y will be expected to entail collaboration between projects within the Challenge Portfolio, and to start the preparation of the Challenge roadmap which will define the collective deliverables, activities and objectives of the portfolio of projects selected.

During the execution of the project, you will interact continuously with the EIC Project Officer assigned to your project and the EIC Programme Manager, assigned to the Challenge Portfolio of your project, who will oversee all the portfolio projects.

II.2.1 Biotech for Climate Resilient Crops and Plant-Based Biomanufacturing

Background and scope

Land based agricultural production is the source of approximately 95% of human food nutrients (UN FAO). Intensive and often inappropriate practices in agriculture have however resulted in severe soil degradation, thereby reducing the capacity of soils to support food production and other important ecosystem services such as the regulation of water, nutrients, and carbon cycles. Soil degradation is further accelerated by the effects of climate change, with abiotic stresses such as heat, drought, salinity, and waterlogging, often in combination, having negative effects on the world’s crop production. The direct impact of a changed climate is also frequently accompanied by indirect impacts due to alterations in the composition and behaviour of weeds, insects, pathogens, and soil microbiome, alongside the impacts of increased amounts of human-generated pollutants.

Plants react to such stresses with what are often conflicting physiological and metabolic responses. These may prioritise one acclimatisation/adaptation strategy over the other, a blend of one or more responses, and/or through developing a completely new strategy, all of which can, in turn, impact final production including nutrient content.

When combined with an increasing human population, likely to increase net demand for food, there is a clear rationale to reinforce existing food and nutrient production systems and explore complementary routes to food production that are more efficient, resilient, sustainable and maintain or increase biodiversity.

This Pathfinder Challenge therefore aims to support projects that enhance adaptation pathways for the production of climate-resilient crops and develop alternative pathways to produce high value ingredients in plants by increasing nutrient profile of crops based on plant native and/or non-native ingredients.

Specific Objectives

Innovative ideas put forward under this Challenge must go beyond incremental changes to the state-of-the-art and result in novel production processes that must deliver energy- and resource-efficient, low emission foods that maintain or increase biodiversity and are integral to a healthy diet.

Funded projects are expected to develop breakthrough technologies that reach TRL4 (validation in laboratory environment) with viable plants at the end of the projects. The proposals should work on both the following objectives:

·Increasing plant growth, yields and resistance to stress through:

oEnhancing tolerance to stress combinations occurring due to different climate scenarios that include the simultaneous exposure of crops to different stresses e.g. heat combined with drought, salinity, flooding, high CO2 levels, as well as indirect effect of climate change via altered composition and behaviour of weeds, insects, pathogens and soil microbiome and possible impact of human-generated pollutants.

oIncreasing water use efficiency and nutrient use efficiency compared to current crops in commercial use.

oImproving plant reproduction and seed filling processes under unfavourable conditions caused by combination of at least two stress factors.

oInvestigating and enhancing plant and soil microbiome interactions.

·Substantially increasing the nutritional value (e.g. proteins, vitamins) in crops through plant native and non-native ingredients in crops.

Projects must also develop a complete methodology for assessing the increase of plant growth, yields, and climate resilience to single and multiple stresses, and/or assess changes to the nutritional value of crops, as appropriate. Proposals should include multi-omics approaches including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and phenomics. These approaches can be further underpinned by leveraging technologies such as, but not limited to nanoparticle technology, chemistry, and advanced artificial intelligence to develop and introduce novel defence and acclimation strategies, currently not present in crops to achieve greater tolerance to harsh environmental conditions and/or biomanufacturing of non-native ingredients, to enable the time required for that development to be significantly shortened. Proposals should also look to address the narrow genetic diversity of novel crops and are also expected to consider regulatory aspects and to build on the work carried out so far by the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA), where appropriate.

Expected Outcomes and Impacts:

In support of Building the future with nature: Boosting Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing in the EU 47 , the Mission Soil 48 , the EU Green Deal 49 , Farm to Fork strategy 50 , the Nature Restoration Law 51 , Fit for 55 52 , and REPowerEU 53 policy actions, the key overall goal of this Challenge is to support the production of sustainable and nutritious food from plants.

This Challenge aims to support the development of climate smart crops and the production of high value plant native and non-native ingredients in a cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner. In the medium to long-term this will:

·Improve the sustainability, efficiency, biodiversity and resilience of the European food supply chain.

·Secure long-term competitiveness of EU Food supply chain while decreasing EU dependency on imports of inputs for primary production, feed, and food.

The following principles will be used to select the portfolio of projects:

I.Selected projects for the portfolio should have a synergy with one another in terms of a common component, for instance projects address similar stress factors for different crops or are leveraging a similar technology. 

II.A balanced representation of native and non-native ingredients. 

III.A balanced representation of conventional and New Genomic Techniques (NGTs).

IV.Diverse type of crops to ensure that the portfolio covers a broad spectrum, if possible, ensuring European geographical coverage where these crops are grown. 

V.Diverse stress factor combinations to ensure that a broad spectrum of stress factors is covered.

VI.Diversity in technological approaches to compare their efficiency.

All projects will participate in a work package dedicated to the development of monitoring and prediction methodologies for climate adaptation assessment and life-cycle-analysis.

II.2.2 Generative-AI based Agents to Revolutionize Medical Diagnosis and Treatment of Cancer

Background and scope

Imaging is a crucial component of cancer clinical protocols, providing detailed morphological, structural, metabolic, and functional information. However, harnessing the full potential of the data generated through medical imaging in clinical settings remains challenging. Clinicians often struggle to combine diverse and large-scale data into a comprehensive view of patient care, disease progression, and treatment efficacy. The inability to seamlessly integrate and interpret diverse data sources result in suboptimal patient outcomes and inefficiencies in the delivery of healthcare.

The integration of traditional Artificial Intelligence (AI) with medical imaging can transform healthcare, but most existing applications are still in their infancy and must overcome a number of challenges to accelerate adoption. These include AI applications being confined to single data modalities, which restricts their overall effectiveness (Monomodal Application); inadequate and insufficient data training, leading to data scarcity and a lack of generalizability, making them less reliable across diverse patient populations, including with regard to gender-sensitivity; and the lack of AI model interpretability, as many AI systems function as "black boxes," providing little insight into their decision-making processes. This lack of transparency limits trust in the systems and their usability in clinical settings.

The goal of this Pathfinder Challenge is to create interactive GenAI autonomous agents and/or a combination of them (super-agent) that provide clinicians with a holistic end to end perspective of patient care, throughout the entire clinical pathway. These agents aim to enhance pattern identification, reduce inconsistencies and errors in diagnoses as well as improve cancer treatment. While the focus is on GenAI, we also encourage the integration of other advanced AI technologies, such as topological and geometric deep learning, neural fields, graph neural networks, etc., which can complement and enhance the robustness and effectiveness of GenAI-based solutions in addressing the challenges of cancer diagnosis and therapy.

The Challenge will support early-stage groundbreaking research projects that will develop and validate novel approaches and concepts for integrating and interpreting multimodal medical imaging and health data. Additionally, it will involve generating reliable synthetic medical data, which will also be pooled to form a common database and used for the development of advanced algorithms.

Specific Objectives

Project proposals under this Challenge should focus on one (and only one) of the following diseases: breast cancer, cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, brain cancer, stomach cancer or colorectal cancer.

Each proposal should address both the following areas (at least one sub-objective from each of the areas):

Area 1: Technological area

I.GenAI-based tools for Integrating Multidimensional Multimodal health Data

Investigate groundbreaking techniques and methodologies for developing GenAI algorithms that combine multidimensional (e.g. time dimension, space dimension) and multimodal data from various sources. These include multiple imaging modalities (e.g., MRI, CT, PET, X-ray), clinical data (e.g., electronic health records, lab results, structured and unstructured clinical data, pathology results, genetics and –omics data, videos, knowledge databases, and other resources). The goal is to provide a comprehensive view of the patient’s condition. The developed algorithms should be capable of producing unified and actionable datasets that can be exploited for the development of the AI tools described in Area 2 (clinical).

II.Medical Data Augmentation

Develop GenAI models based on groundbreaking techniques that are in the conceptual or initial experimental phase for medical data augmentation. These models should be capable of creating highly realistic synthetic medical data (images, genomics data, etc.) and generating complementary data from existing sources (for example producing synthetic CT images from MRI images), to support iterative cycles of model training.

III.Medical Knowledge Representation and Integration

Create an initial prototype GenAI model for medical knowledge representation and integration. This model should aim to develop a comprehensive and dynamic medical knowledge base, to identify discrete medical imaging features associated with demographic information and systemic conditions, to improve the interpretability of AI-based models and extract new knowledge not previously identifiable by experts without assistance.

Area 2: Clinical Area

I.Predictive Diagnosis

Develop an interactive autonomous agent capable of assessing the likelihood of a patient developing cancer by analysing their medical history, imaging data, and genetic information. The agent should provide personalised health risk predictions, enabling early detection and preventive measures.

II.Enhance Personalized Treatment Selection

Develop novel AI algorithms and architectures that leverages multidimensional and multimodal data integration, along with synthetic data generation, to predict the optimal treatment pathway for specific patient conditions, as well as to forecast disease progression and treatment efficacy providing a comprehensive view of patient care.

Appropriate performance metrics should be considered for the continuous evaluation and testing of the scientific and technical robustness (including accurately quantify uncertainties) of all developed algorithms and architectures in Areas 1 and 2. Rigorous testing against diverse datasets is essential to ensure that the models perform reliably across various patient demographics and conditions, thereby reducing the risk of skewed results and ensuring precision from diagnoses to therapy.

Projects should also conduct proof of concept studies in controlled settings to demonstrate improved and more accurate diagnosis and treatment when compared to current clinical practice. The viability of the developed technologies should be evaluated, guiding further refinement and improvement. For instance, a super-agent could be validated for assisting and/or replacing clinicians through the whole clinical pathway of the patient, providing a holistic view of patient care, that is currently unachievable due to fragmented healthcare systems and associated expertise.

The focus should also be on enhancing the interpretability of AI models/agents, making their decision-making processes more transparent and understandable to clinicians. This could involve developing cutting-edge techniques such as causal inference methods, explainable AI frameworks, or novel visualization tools that provide deeper insights into AI decision-making processes. 

The AI models developed under this Challenge are expected to comply with the EU concept for Trustworthy AI 54 , relevant ethical principles 55 , and the AI Act 56 . In addition to focusing on performance, careful attention must be given to data quality, transparency, privacy, and security.

Proposers are encouraged to leverage the data and tools available in the Cancer Image Europe platform 57 (deployed in the context of the European Cancer Imaging Initiative 58 )  for their proposed work. In turn they should contribute the datasets, and developed AI tools and models to the platform under agreed conditions. All datasets produced should be described where possible with metadata records in the EU dataset catalogue of the European Health Data Space (EHDS) using the Health DCAT-AP 59 metadata standard  60

Projects that address only one of the two ‘Areas’ or other cancer types will be considered "out" of scope.

Expected Outcomes and Impacts:

In support of the European AI Strategy 61 and the Cancer Plan for Europe 62  and the Cancer Mission 63  this Challenge looks to support the the development of the next generation models for cancer diagnosis and treatment, with Generative AI.

This Challenge aims to create a collaborative environment where diverse expertise —including for example data science, informatics, oncology, radiology, pathology, medical physics, bioinformatics, geneticists, healthcare administrators, and patient advocacy groups — converges to address the complexities of developing autonomous agents for holistic patient care, through enhanced diagnosis and personalized treatment.

The Challenge aspires to significantly improve patient care and reduce pressure on the healthcare system by leveraging advanced interactive autonomous agents for diagnosis and personalized treatment. By alleviating the burdens on clinicians and ensuring compliance with the EU concept for Trustworthy AI, the initiative will enhance the quality and reliability of medical services. Economically, it promises substantial cost reductions and cost avoidance, leading to long-term improvements in healthcare efficiency and sustainability. Ultimately, this challenge will foster innovation and establish Europe as a leader in the field, delivering profound benefits to patients, healthcare providers, and society at large.

The portfolio of selected projects will be designed to deliver a set of agents/models for improved diagnosis and personalized treatment of the above-mentioned cancers. Specifically, the projects will collaborate to:

-Create a shared database of synthetically generated images to be used across all projects for the development of their algorithms;

-Compare the use of a combination of the agents in the case of multiple cancers;

-Benchmark agents for enhanced diagnosis and personalized treatment selection; 

-Define innovative clinical pathways in oncology;

-Externally validate the developed agents within a project at clinical premises of another project in the portfolio;

-Develop standardized methods and frameworks for evaluating AI- Act and Medical Device Regulation (MDR)- compliant generative AI models. 

The portfolio of projects to be funded under this Challenge will be composed in such a way that they address ideally all cancers mentioned in this call, apply different technologies, and provide access to relevant clinical facilities and research infrastructures. The following categories will be used for the composition:

Category 1 – type of cancer

Category 2 – type of technology

Category 3 – access to appropriate infrastructure data and ecosystem integration.

Specific conditions

Applications for this Challenge with elements that concern the evolution of European communication networks (5G, post-5G and other technologies linked to the evolution of European communication networks) will be subject to restriction for the protection of European communication networks (see Annex II – Section B1)

II.2.3 Towards autonomous robot collectives delivering collaborative tasks in dynamic unstructured construction environments

Background and scope

Robotic automation offers significant advantages to several sectors, yet on-site construction robotics is amongst the most challenging and least understood fields in robotics. The unstructured, dynamic environment with human presence makes navigation and automation of the many concurrent construction tasks deeply challenging. Further, the current state-of-the-art solutions focus on adding higher degrees of automation to legacy tools, such as heavy equipment designed for diesel engines and human operators.

Radical innovations are essential for the sector to address the unprecedented wave of building growth, especially in the context of labour shortages, a productivity gap between the construction and other industries, rising expectations for occupational health and safety, and the need for healthier and more affordable living environments.

Through the collaboration of multiple agents (both humans and machines) construction processes can be accelerated, enabling more complex processes with multiple tasks to be performed simultaneously and collaboratively. Multi-robotic collaboration, where robotic agents support and complement each other’s tasks and skill sets within the same workspace, may unlock entirely new processes that are not possible using single robotic machines. This approach could involve multiple distributed “swarms” of collaborative robots using distributed control algorithms and robot learning systems, which may be better suited to large, spatially distributed tasks and can adapt to unpredictable environments. Doing so while also supporting the electrification of the (legacy suite of) construction equipment, will help break with the need to go for ever larger machines and facilitate the development of novel technologies that enable efficient accurate and reliable control, and the adoption of collaborative robots that are suitable for commercial on-site construction environments.

Realising the disruptive potential of novel emerging technology paradigms that reconsider construction processes from the fundamentals can help supplant and substitute the legacy suite of tools with novel autonomous collaborative construction robots in an integrated, “designed-for-robotics” digital production and assembly chain.

Such developments could also further enhance an emerging paradigm shift from today’s complex mix of on-site construction tasks, towards a future of off-site fabrication and on-site assembly. Off-site fabrication offers industrial economic advantages of producing modularized building elements at scale in a controlled, digitalized and automated factory environment. For the construction sector this paradigm shift can deliver demand-side emissions reductions, by implementing strategies of digitalized structural efficiency and novel materials, as well as of zero-emission construction sites through electrification.

This Pathfinder Challenge aims to address all construction tasks typically required for site preparation, substructure, and superstructure, as well as the coordination between these tasks to support a transition towards building with autonomous electrified construction equipment. It includes the role of human agents in construction processes, as even high degrees of multi-robotic autonomy with low degrees of supervision will require a collaborative connection between human and robotic agents, ensuring they can safely collaborate and share the same workspace.

Specific objectives

The overall objective of this Challenge is the development of breakthrough technologies in the domain of autonomous collaborative on-site construction robots for an integrated, designed-for-robotics, digital production and assembly chain.

The Challenge is open to the 3 main construction tasks applied to the 2 main construction segments of buildings and infrastructure. Innovative application in adjacent construction segments (for example coastal protection foundations for energy infrastructure) also fall within scope.

Each funded project shall deliver the following 3 specific objectives:

Objective 1:

Development of a simplified structural, load-bearing, material-robot building system to assemble a representative and future-relevant structure (pavilion) using a multitude of discrete modules (elements, segments, blocks, voussoirs). This system must demonstrate TRL4 (validation in laboratory environment) of the autonomous collaborative multirobotic assembly. The structure can represent an infrastructure (for example a bridge, tunnel, culvert, conduit), a building (for example a tower, vault, dome, arch, multi-story skeleton, wall) or other construction elements (for example a foundation, secant wall, barrier, sea wall). The building system can also integrate unprocessed and pre-processed in-situ building materials (rocks, sand, natural materials, demolition materials, disassembled elements). Projects are expected to demonstrate the technologies at least at a relevant human scale in terms of volume, mass and moment of inertia, and ideally at a larger real-world architectural scale, rather than at a laboratory desktop scale.

Solutions are expected to incorporate “design-for-robotic-assembly” aspects, such as the robot-material interfaces, module interfaces and connectors, and may include innovative approaches such as embedded sensing in the modules.

A virtual simulation of the disassembled state, various intermediate assembly stages (including temporary (robotic) support measures if necessary) and final assembled state is expected to be part of the systems development process. The project should include a documented validation of key design decisions (for example materials used or configurations that simulate scaled behaviour) against the minimal requirements of the TRL4 demonstration objectives of the autonomous mobile multi-robotic collaborative platform.

Objective 2:

Development of an autonomous mobile multi-robotic collaborative platform using at least two, preferably more, mutually aware collaborative robotic systems specifically designed for the assembly tasks outlined in Objective 1. This objective requires a structured systems engineering approach to conduct a thorough functional system analysis and to allocate system-level functions between humans and machines within the target autonomous mobile multi-robotic collaborative platform.

The design should include the definition of system states and modes, along with the transitions between them, to ensure safe autonomous operations and effective demonstration of robot-robot and human-robot collaborations and interactions (passive, active, adaptive) at TRL4.

The project should also describe how the proposed technology can be scaled to meet the full dimensions of the intended commercial application in future.

Utilizing existing industrial robots or modifying suitable existing construction tools is allowed. However, these approaches may face workspace limitations when scaled to full commercial dimensions. Conversely, novel relative multi-robotic platforms could make full use of the opportunities of the material-robot system independent of scaling limitations in future.

Objective 3:

Achieve a TRL4 demonstration of an autonomous assembly sequence using the demonstration building system developed in Objective 1, executed by the autonomous mobile multi-robotic collaborative platform developed in Objective 2. The demonstration of a subsequent disassembly sequence is optional but encouraged if the building system is designed for disassembly. The demonstration will take place in a laboratory environment, including tests that explore the system’s resilience and limits under controlled unstructured real-world conditions (for example fault tolerance, granular uneven surfaces, environmental obstacles). These tests aim to identify key weaknesses and recommend future technology developments.

The specific objective of this challenge is to advance the digitalized chain of off-site modular production with on-site autonomous mobile multi-robotic collaborative assembly. Therefore, on-site 3D-printing of cementitious materials or polymers as a primary construction task is outside the scope of this challenge.

Expected Outcomes and Impacts:

This Challenge contributes to the European Green Deal 64 , the European AI Strategy 65 , and the key strategic orientations of Horizon Europe 66 for the digital and green transitions of the construction sector. The anticipated impacts of this Challenge include addressing likely shortages and competition in the labour markets, enhancing productivity and competitiveness within the construction industry, and improving worker safety. It will facilitate a shift towards offsite industrial fabrication coupled with onsite assembly and disassembly, reducing emissions from on-site construction activities, and lowering costs and mitigating risks associated with construction projects. This Challenge will also serve as a lighthouse for industrialization in important policy areas, such as affordable housing, the renovation wave, circular construction, and infrastructure development.

The field of mobile construction robotics, in particular heterogeneous collaborative robots assembling discrete building elements, is challenging and multi-disciplinary. Given the nascent state of the enabling technologies, the cumulative impact of the portfolio of Pathfinder projects is expected to surpass that of individual projects. Consortia will benefit from mutual learning and the exchange of approaches and expertise in areas such as mapping, navigating and building awareness of unstructured environments, force-aware manipulation, swarm collectives, as well as commercialisation pathways.

Furthermore, consortia will be encouraged to collaborate on developing performance metrics and communicate their outputs to the broader public with a view to accelerating the adoption of these radical innovations by the sector. Such valuable joint portfolio activities are anticipated to be discussed and agreed upon by the funded projects.

The portfolio of projects selected will aim to cover a complementary set of projects that span the “application” and “approach” fields specified below and combinations thereof:

-Applications fields (super-structure, sub-structure, site-preparation, building, infrastructure, other construction, target type of environment).

-Approach (type of robot, number of agents, coordination strategy, level of autonomy, strategy for stability during assembly sequence, multi-modal sensors, resilience strategy for environmental variability, type of discrete building elements and fixations, level of integration of material-robot system).

Specific conditions

Applications for this Challenge with elements that concern the evolution of European communication networks (5G, post-5G and other technologies linked to the evolution of European communication networks) will be subject to restriction for the protection of European communication networks (see Annex II – Section B1)

II.2.4 Waste-to-value devices: Circular production of renewable fuels, chemicals and materials

Background and scope

Fossil fuels supply a majority of the world’s energy and also provide the raw materials, or feedstocks, for many essential everyday products. While energy provision is becoming increasingly decarbonized, the production of fuels, chemicals and materials requires carbon atoms as feedstocks. However, their production can be “de-fossilized”, by utilising renewable energy and alternative carbon sources. Likewise, a circular economy approach offers scope to reduce external dependencies and source other essential molecular feedstocks including critical raw materials from wastes.

This Pathfinder Challenge therefore focuses on the development of next generation technologies that turn today’s problematic waste streams into essential building blocks of a future circular economy. Furthermore, it specifically focusses on currently non- or hard-to-recycle types of synthetic polymer materials (including among other mixtures of different types of plastics, polymeric composite materials, micro-/nanoplastics, untreated plastic waste, diapers, rubber, etc.), flue gases, wastewater and seawater desalination brines. Proposals must target real-life industrial and household waste streams where current recycling methods face insurmountable barriers e.g., due to impurities, the presence of noxious additives, inseparable material mixtures or non-biodegradable materials. An important side effect is the remediation of waste streams with respect to micro-/nanoplastics, trace metals and noxious substances. These novel technologies should be scalable, easily applicable and deliver products with higher economic value as compared to waste destruction.

The scope of technological solutions addressed in this Challenge is limited to the following technologies with currently low Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), where significant synergies by working in a Challenge portfolio are expected: solar  reforming 67 and synthetic biology devices, brine mining 68 and integrated capture and conversion technologies 69 . Microbial-based and photocatalytic remediation processes are included as well. Computational material science and AI, and bottom-up synthetic biology are supported as key enablers at the fundamental research level.

Thermochemical approaches (such as pyrolysis or gasification) and “dark” (not light-driven) chemical recycling are out-of-scope of this Pathfinder Challenge. Likewise, food and biomass waste, traditional bulk metal waste, glass, paper, cardboard and mono-PET waste are also out of scope.

Specific objectives

The Challenge seeks ambitious proposals that address one (and only one) of the following focus areas:

Area 1: Fully integrated waste-to-value devices

This includes 1) devices for converting waste streams into (feedstock for) fuels, chemicals and materials and 2) devices for remediation; where processes are solely driven by renewable energy sources (preferably directly by sunlight) and focus on the selective production of added value products, beyond hydrogen as the sole end product: 

(I)Fully integrated solar reforming or synthetic biology devices, enabling the treatment of synthetic polymer materials, while delivering fast and efficient decomposition under sustainable reaction conditions (including the use of process chemicals).

(II)Integrated capture and conversion technologies, capturing and converting feedstock from flue gases, or wastewater in a single step/ single device into fuels, chemicals and materials, providing increased energy- and materials efficiency as compared to not fully integrated process chains.

(III)Membrane-based and electrochemical brine mining technologies recovering raw materials, CO2 and water from seawater desalinisation brines.

(IV)Ex-situ remediation devices based on microbial/enzymatic and/or photocatalytic degradation, both purifying wastewater and seawater of noxious substances, metals, or nano-/microplastics, and producing added value remediation products. This should take place in a reactor, not in the open field.

Proposals addressing only parts of the full waste-to-value process (e.g., half reactions) will not be considered. Integrated hybrid approaches, at the interface of various disciplines, and autonomously operating devices continuously optimized with AI, are particularly welcome. The resulting devices must reach TRL 4 within the 3–4-year project lifetime.

The associated processes must not down-cycle the waste substrate but create products of higher economic and environmental value as compared to the initial waste stream. They must be energy and material-efficient and fully sustainable, minimising the associated energy, water, chemicals and land footprint. Operating conditions (e.g., related to temperature, pressure and the use of additional chemicals) should be optimised and the circular use of process consumables, such as water, catalyst materials or chemical additives maximised. They must deploy environmentally safe, stable materials, with non-toxic degradation products and the developed devices must be recyclable-by-design.

Proposals must take a holistic view of the complete waste valorisation chain by optimising the different elements (pre-treatment, conversion, product separation and storage) with respect to one another. The systems must also be robust and easy-to-handle to allow operations that are independent from large-scale infrastructures, with extended lifetimes and a capability to treat real-life waste streams which have undergone minimal sorting and pre-treatment.

Proposals have to clearly indicate how the proposed solution benchmarks against industrially deployed recycling methods such as mechanical recycling, composting, biogas fermentation or waste-to-energy technologies, and emerging recycling methods such as chemical recycling or thermochemical approaches.

Area 2: Understanding underlying mechanisms by means of computational material science and AI 

Projects in this focus area must deliver advances and scientific breakthroughs in the fundamental understanding of the underlying physical, chemical, and biological processes that will enable fully sustainable and scalable waste-to-value devices. Projects should address all the following specific objectives:

-Explore fundamental phenomena crucial to multiple waste-to-value device types, such as the development of efficient, stable and inexpensive catalysts, interface engineering and the effect of the surrounding medium.

-Develop more accurate and less resource-intensive quantum mechanical and AI methods to guide, predict and interpret reliably experimental works.

-Bridge the scales from describing properties at the atomic, mesoscopic level up to the macroscopic device level within a multiscale approach and describe phenomena over different timescales.

-Adopt a holistic approach to exploring phenomena applicable to multiple waste-to-value device types (aligned with Area 1). Devices stemming from Area 1 should serve to validate the developed theoretical models.

Area 3: Cells from scratch by means of bottom-up synthetic biology

Projects in this area must look to deliver scientific breakthroughs in bottom-up synthetic biology to enable the use of tailored microbial cell factories for the degradation and valorisation of waste and the production of fossil-free fuels, chemicals, and materials. Projects should address all the following specific objectives:

-Develop synthetic, fully artificial cells for future large-scale biotechnology applications, tailored to deliver desired functionalities such as carbon fixation or synthetic polymer decomposition.

-Engineer cell-like systems to produce compounds from abundantly available building blocks, such as water and carbon oxides.

-Engineer cell-like systems to decompose diverse types of waste, in particular synthetic plastic waste, into compounds that are valorisable as feedstock for a downstream production of fuels, chemicals and materials. At this stage, systems will not have to be completely autonomous and self-replicating, but the integration of different modules should be implemented.

Expected outcomes and impacts

This Challenge is in line with REPowerEU 70 and Fit for 55 71 . It is compliant with the Renewable Energy Directive 72 , the Waste Framework Directive 73 and the Critical Raw Materials Act 74 . It supports the EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) 75 and the herein included Plastics strategy . It builds on the Industrial Carbon Management strategy 76 , the Communication on Sustainable Carbon Cycles 77 , and the Directive on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources 78 .

The portfolio of projects selected under this Challenge are expected to collectively cover Areas 1, 2 and 3. A maximum of one proposal from each of Areas 2 and 3 will be selected, whereas the aim for Area 1 is to select proposals that cover as many device categories (i-iv) as possible. Combining these three aspects into a single portfolio with close interaction between the projects and a commonly developed vision is expected to significantly speed up the innovation journey by driving synergies and mutual learning.

The resulting portfolio of projects will in time contribute to:

-Local energy and resource supply, allowing communities and remote areas to have access to reliable and sustainable waste recycling, supporting the local production of fuels, chemicals and materials. Reduction/ eventual independence from the importation of critical raw materials in the context of increasing demand for such materials for renewable energy and fuel technologies.

-Increased share of recycled waste, minimizing waste disposal in open dumps, landfills and incineration and the related negative impacts on our environment.

-Micro-/nano plastic removal, towards a zero-brine discharge.

-Decentralised, circular production of fuels, chemicals and materials where waste serves as an indispensable local resource enabling on-site production replacing fossil resources. Reduction in the demand for fossil fuels alongside associated CO2 and pollutant emissions reductions.

III.EIC Transition

Have you identified EU-funded project result(s) with promising commercial potential that could be the basis for ground-breaking innovations and promising new businesses?

ªIs this novel promising technology ready for the next steps towards its maturation and validation, to be further developed and validated for some specific, high potential, commercial applications?

ªHave you conducted a preliminary market research to identify potential markets for your innovation and explored potential competitors?

ªDo you envisage building a motivated and entrepreneurial team with a mix of skills, including researchers, business people, marketers etc. to develop and drive the idea towards commercial success?

If the answer to each and every of these questions is a clear ‘yes’, then EIC Transition may be the right call for you.

Why should you apply?

EIC Transition funds innovation activities that go beyond the experimental proof of principle in laboratory (applications must have completed all elements of Technology Readiness Level 3). It supports both the maturation and validation of your novel technology from the lab to the relevant application environments (by making use of prototyping, formulation, models, user testing or other validation tests) as well as explorations and development of a sustainable business plan and business model towards commercialisation into high potential markets.

Your proposed activities must include further technology development on the results achieved in a previous project and follow user-centric methodologies to increase chances of the innovation’s future commercial success in the market. EIC Transition projects should address, in a balanced way, both technology and market/business development, possibly including iterative learning processes based on early customer or user feedback. These activities should include, subject to the level of maturity of the technology, a suitable mix of technology development and validation activities to increase the maturity of the technology beyond proof of concept to viable demonstrators of the technology in the intended field of application (i.e., applications must have completed all elements of Technology Readiness Level 3up to TRL 5 to 6 at the end of the project). The activities must in all cases address improving market readiness towards commercialisation and deployment (market research, value proposition, refine incipient business plan 79  and validate incipient business model 80 , intellectual property protection, etc.) and aspects of regulation, certification and standardisation (if relevant), aimed at getting both the technology and the business idea investment ready.

EIC Transition aims at maturing both your technology and business idea thus increasing its technology and market/commercial readiness. The expected outcomes of your EIC Transition project are a) a technology that is demonstrated to be effective for its intended application and b) a validated business model and a business plan 81 for its development to market. It is also expected that the intellectual property generated by your EIC Transition project is formally protected in an adequate way (Annex 6).

EIC Transition can support several different pathways beyond fundamental research, from technology development and product design to business modelling and commercialisation strategy to reach the market. Some non-exhaustive illustrative examples could be the following pathways:

ªA focused collaborative project to further develop strategic and high impact technologies towards specific applications while improving also the market readiness towards a promising market application. This pathway is likely to require a collaboration among several applicants (‘multi-beneficiary’ approach) including SMEs, research performers, technology transfer offices and potential users/ customers; 

ªAn individual SME (including start-ups, spin-offs) identifies a market opportunity to apply the results of an eligible project towards a specific market application. This pathway is likely to require, or lead to, a licensing arrangement with the SME and could also involve a collaboration between the result owner(s) of the eligible project and the interested SME;

ªA team of entrepreneurial researchers within a research or technology organisation who want to turn selected project results into a viable product by looking for a suitable business model or creating a start-up or spin-off company, and which may involve collaboration with the host research or technology organisation, as well as their technology transfer offices. In some cases, the results may already be relatively close to market or ready for investment (e.g. often with higher TRLs) and would therefore normally not need significant further technological development and hence require lower amounts of funding.

Technology Transfer Offices or business schools are encouraged to actively participate in the EIC Transition project, as they can play a key role in enabling and supporting researchers with the development and commercialisation of their research results.

At the end of your EIC Transition project, you should be ready for the next stage, which can be to apply for EIC Accelerator (if you are a SME, including start-ups or spin-offs), and to seek other investors or sources of funding, to enter licensing or collaboration agreements with third parties, or other routes to market deployment. In case your project is not led by an SME or commercial partner, the formation and spin out of a new company can be included as part of the activities. You will be expected to describe the intended pathway and route to market in your proposal and must include specific milestones together with concrete and verifiable KPIs during the implementation of your project to assess progress towards the market.

The EIC Transition project is expected to mature your innovation both in its TRL and market and business readiness 82  from the beginning of the project and with both tracks going in parallel and interacting between them.

Applicants to EIC Transition can submit proposals through an EIC Transition Open call which has no predefined thematic priorities and is open to proposals in any field of science, technology or application. 83

Can you apply?

In order to apply, your proposal must meet the general eligibility requirements (see Annex 2) as well as specific eligibility requirements described in this section.

Your proposal must build on results already achieved within an eligible project that are, at least, at experimental proof of concept (applications must have completed all elements of Technology Readiness Level 3or, ideally, technology validated in the lab level (TRL 4). Proposals building on project results at other TRLs level are not eligible.

EIC Transition is restricted to proposals based on results generated by the following eligible projects:

ªEIC Pathfinder projects (including projects funded under the Horizon 2020 EIC pilot Pathfinder, FET-Open, FET-Proactive, CSA and CSA Lump sum FET Innovation Launchpad, and FET Flagships calls. 84 )

ªEuropean Research Council Proof of Concept projects funded Horizon 2020 or Horizon Europe.

ªResearch and Innovation Actions 85  funded under Horizon 2020 Societal challenges and Leadership in Industrial Technologies and under Horizon Europe pillar II, with an eligible TRL 86 .European Defence Fund (EDF), including the Preparatory Action on Defence Research, research projects, but only for proposals which are focused on civil applications (including dual use) 87 .

If you are applying on the basis of an eligible project for which the grant is still ongoing, you may apply if the start date of the grant is more than 12 months before the cut-off date of the relevant EIC Transition call).

If you are applying on the basis of an eligible project which has already been completed, you may apply within 30 months of the completion of the project (i.e. the end date of the grant for the eligible project is less than 30 months from the cut-off date of the relevant EIC Transition call).

You do not need to be a participant, Principal Investigator or result owner of the previous projects; on the contrary, new participants including start-ups, SME or other innovation actors are welcome and encouraged to apply:

ªIf you (applicant (s) eligible for funding) were part of the eligible project whose results are further developed in the EIC Transition proposal, you need to confirm in your proposal that you are the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) owner or holder and have the necessary rights to commercialise the results of the project for the whole duration of the EIC Transition project.

ªIf you (applicant(s) eligible for funding) were not part of the eligible project whose results are further developed in the EIC Transition proposal, you (the applicant/coordinator) need to include in your proposal a commitment letter from the owner(s) of the relevant result(s), which confirms the commitment of the latter to negotiate with you fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory access to such results, including IPR, for the purpose of future commercial exploitation for the whole duration of the EIC Transition project.

ªIn all cases you need to specify in your application the grant number and acronym of the eligible project(s) which generated the result together with reference to where the result has been reported (in the periodic reporting, the Horizon results platform, EIC Transition ‘innovation discovery’ tool 88 powered by the Innovation Radar or CORDIS).

You can apply for EIC Transition either as:

ªA single legal entity established in a Member State or an Associated Country (‘mono-beneficiary’) if you are a start-up, SME or research performing organisation (university, research or technology organisation, including teams, individual Principal Investigators and inventors in such institutions who intend to form a spin-off company). 89 Larger companies (i.e. which do not qualify as SMEs) are not eligible to apply as a single legal entity; or

ªA small consortium of two independent legal entities from two different Member States or Associated Countries, or

ªA consortium of minimum three and maximum five eligible independent legal entities (‘multi-beneficiary’) following standard rules i.e. must include at least one legal entity established in a Member State and at least two other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries (see Annex 2). 90  

Only one proposal can be submitted per eligible originating ERC Proof of Concept funded in Horizon 2020 or Horizon Europe and FET Innovation Launchpad project in the same call.

Consortia may for example include start-ups, SMEs, research organisations, or larger companies, user/customer organisations or potential end users (e.g., hospitals, utilities, industry, regulatory and standardisation bodies).

The applicant must specify which path to market will explore and pursue during the execution of the EIC Transition project: direct exploitation by coordinator or beneficiary, creation of a spin-off company in a Member State or an Associated Country, licensing to an established company (not part of the consortium) or other path to be described.

Participation restrictions

Applications with elements that concern the evolution of European communication networks (5G, post-5G and other technologies linked to the evolution of European communication networks) will be subject to restriction for the protection of European communication networks (see Annex II – Section B1)

What support will you receive if your proposal is funded?

The total indicative budget for this call is EUR 98 million.

If successful, you will receive a grant for a Research and Innovation Action to cover the eligible costs, necessary for the implementation of your project. For this call, the EIC considers proposals with a requested EU contribution of more than EUR 0.5 million and less than EUR 2.5 million and duration between 1 and 3 years as appropriate. Nonetheless, in exceptional cases, this does not preclude you to request larger amounts, if very well motivated and duly explained.

The funding rate of this grant will be 100% of the eligible costs. Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum and the amount will be determined during the evaluation process. Applicants must therefore propose the amount of the lump sum based on their estimated project costs as defined in the Decision of 7 July 2021 authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025). 91  

The projects funded through EIC Transition are eligible:

ªto receive Booster grants of a fixed amount not exceeding EUR 50 000 to undertake complementary activities to explore potential pathways to commercialisation or for portfolio activities (see Annex 5).

ªto submit an EIC Accelerator proposal via the Fast Track scheme (see Annex 3).

In addition to funding, projects will receive tailor-made access to a wide range of Business Acceleration Services and matchmaking events (see Section V).

The Model Grant Agreement can be found on the Funding & Tenders portal.

How do you apply; how long does it take?

The deadline for submitting your proposal is 17 September 2025 at 17h00 Brussels local time. 92

You must submit your proposal via the Funding & Tenders Portal before the given deadline.

Sections 1 to 3 and the cover page (that includes the information about the related project on which the current EIC Transition proposal is built on) of part B of your proposal must consist of a maximum of 22 format A4 pages.

Your proposal will be evaluated first by EIC expert evaluators. You will be informed about the result of this evaluation, including feedback on your proposal, indicatively within 9 weeks after the call deadline. If your proposal successfully passes this first evaluation phase (see details below), you will be invited for an interview, which will be organised approximately between 11-13 weeks after the deadline. At the interview, you will be assessed by a panel of maximum 6 EIC Jury members. You will be informed about the result of the interview indicatively within 4 weeks from the start of the interviews.

If you are successful, you can expect your grant agreement to be signed within 6 months from the call deadline (indicative) and you are expected to start your project within 2 months after signing the grant agreement.

How does the EIC decide if your proposal will be funded?

In a first step, at least three EIC expert evaluators will evaluate and score your proposal against each award criterion (see below). The overall score for each evaluation criterion will be the average of the corresponding scores attributed by the individual evaluators. The total score of your proposal will be the sum of the overall scores from the three evaluation criteria.

Starting with the highest scoring proposal and in descending order, a pool of the best ranked proposals (highest scoring) requesting an aggregated financial support equal to approximately 2.2 times the budget available, will be invited to the next step. If in that pool:

ªat least 30% of the applications are submitted by women-led SMEs or consortia (see definitions in the Glossary), only the applications of that pool will be invited to interviews; 

ªless than 30% of the applications are submitted by women-led SMEs or consortia, 93 the pool will be expanded to subsequent best ranked applications (starting with the highest scoring in descending, sequential order and at least equal score under Excellence criterion) submitted by women-led SMEs or consortia until reaching, if possible, a composition of the pool of at least 30% of applications submitted by women-led SMEs or consortia. All such applicants invited to interview must have met all evaluation criteria thresholds from the remote evaluation (Table 4).

The Agency will seek assistance from the European Patent Office to analyse the technological novelty, the inventive merit and the proposed future strategy of EIC proposals shortlisted for EIC Jury interview. EPO experts will not participate directly in the evaluation process but will provide their assessment to the EIC Jury as material ‘for information’. The assessment by the patent examiners will not be binding and the Jury appointed by the EIC will have complete freedom to decide on its relevance.

The second step is an interview with an EIC jury. At the interview your proposal may be represented by a maximum of five persons. 94 Only individuals mentioned in the proposal and involved in the future project implementation can represent your proposal at the interview.

The EIC Jury will be composed of between four and six members and may additionally include one EIC Programme Manager as observer with expertise in your area or managing one of the EIC Portfolios your project could be allocated to. During the interview you should convincingly pitch your proposal to the EIC Jury, who will ask you questions aimed at clarifying various aspects of your proposal in line with the award criteria (in particular those regarding the quality of the team, the different elements already developed within the incipient business plan and incipient business model, the milestones and KPIs). The EIC Jury will recommend your proposal for funding, place it on a reserve list or not (‘GO’, ‘GO Reserve’ ‘NO GO’). If the jury recommends a proposal to be placed in a reserve list (‘GO Reserve’) the proposal may then be funded if additional budget becomes available. The remote evaluation score will be used to rank the proposals in the reserve list 95 . 

Proposers who succeed in securing EIC Transition funding will be strongly encouraged to undertake in the project’s first year, the “Investor Readiness training” (including business plan development and / or investor pitch preparations) provided by EIC Business Acceleration Services.

Proposals will be assessed according to the following award criteria (Table 4). For the interviews, the jury may ask questions concerning any of the award criteria.

The following award criteria are applied coherently with the level of technological and business maturity expected from an EIC Transition proposal as described in this Work Programme.

You will receive as feedback of the evaluation an Evaluation Summary Report from the first evaluation step. If you have been invited for an interview, you will also receive feedback from the jury.

If you meet all evaluation criteria thresholds at the first step but are not selected for funding (including from a No-GO recommendation from the jury), you will be awarded a Seal of Excellence. If the proposal is submitted by a consortia, Seal of Excellence will be awarded to the coordinator of the proposal, listing the other participating legal entities.

IV.EIC Accelerator

ªDo you have a high-impact innovative technology, product, service or business model that could create new markets or disrupt existing ones in Europe and even worldwide?

ªAre you a start-up or a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) with the ambition and commitment to scale up?

ªAre you looking for substantial funding, but the risks involved are too high for private investors alone to invest the full amount needed?

If your answers to the above questions are ‘yes’, then the EIC Accelerator may be the right funding scheme for you.

Why should you apply?

The EIC Accelerator supports companies (principally SMEs, including start-ups) to scale up high impact innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones. The EIC Accelerator provides a unique combination of grant and investment funding and Business Acceleration Services (see Section V).

The EIC Accelerator focuses in particular on innovations building on scientific discovery or technological breakthroughs (‘deep tech’) and where significant funding is needed over a long timeframe before returns can be generated (‘patient capital’). Such innovations often struggle to attract financing because the risks and time period involved are too high. Funding and support from the EIC Accelerator is designed to enable such innovators to attract the full investment amounts needed for scale up in a shorter timeframe.

The EIC Accelerator supports the later stages of technology development as well as scale up. The technology component of your innovation must therefore have been tested and validated in a laboratory and other relevant environment (e.g., at least Technology Readiness Level 5). The EIC Accelerator looks to support companies where the EIC support will act as a catalyst to crowd in other investors necessary for the scale up of the innovation.

Applicants to EIC Accelerator can submit proposals through:

ªEIC Accelerator Open, which has no predefined thematic priorities and is open to proposals in any field of technology or application 97 ;

ªEIC Accelerator Challenges in predefined areas of emerging and strategic technologies.

Can you apply?

To be an eligible applicant to EIC Accelerator, you must apply as one of the following eligible entities:

ªa single company classified as a SME, and established within a Member State or an Associated Country (see Annex 2); or

ªa single company classified as a small mid-cap (up to 499 employees) established in a Member State or an Associated Country, but only for “investment component only” support or for “blended finance” in exceptional cases for rapid scale up purposes; or

ªone or more natural persons 98 (including individual entrepreneurs) or legal entities, which are either:

a.from a Member State or an Associated Country intending to establish an SME or small mid-cap (as defined above) in a Member State or Associated Country by the time of signing the EIC Accelerator grant agreement or, in case the equity only is awarded, at the latest at the date of signature of the investment agreement;

b.intending to invest in an SME or small mid-cap established in a Member State or an Associated Country and may submit a proposal on behalf of that SME or small mid-cap, provided that a prior agreement exists with the company. The grant agreement and/or the investment agreement will be signed with the beneficiary/ final recipient of funding company only, subject to the "Approach in specific cases relating to a parent or holding company and an operating company" (see below); or

c.from a non-associated third country intending to establish an SME (including start-ups) or to relocate an existing SME to a Member State or an Associated Country. The company must prove its effective establishment in a Member State or an Associated Country at the time of submission of the full proposal.

The standard admissibility and eligibility conditions are detailed in Annex 2.

There are limitations on the number of times you can submit a proposal described in the section on application submission limits as explained below.

If you are currently a participant in an eligible project funded by Horizon Europe or Horizon 2020 then you may be able to apply through your existing project under the Fast Track scheme (see Annex 3). This scheme is managed by the funding body responsible for the existing project and applies to funding bodies listed in Annex 3. Applicants may also be able to apply if they have a project financed by an eligible programme managed by a Member State or an Associated Country under the pilot Plug-in scheme (see Annex 4).

What support will you receive if your proposal is funded?

The total indicative budget for this call is EUR 634 million. EUR 384 million of the total indicative budget will be allocated to EIC Accelerator Open and EUR 250 million to EIC Accelerator Challenges. The total indicative budget for each Accelerator Challenges is provided in Challenge descriptions below.

The indicative budget for investment components is EUR 348 million and is managed by the EIC Fund. This budget may be increased by unused amounts allocated to the EIC Fund under previous EIC Work Programmes 99 .

The EIC Accelerator provides:

a)grant component only (‘Grant Only’) that will take the form of a lump sum contribution 100 via a grant agreement. Grant only shall be provided only once to any legal entity for the duration of the Horizon Europe programme (2021-27) and under the following cumulative conditions:

ªthe project shall include information on the capacities and willingness of the applicant to scale-up; 

ªthe beneficiary shall be a start-up or an SME;

ªa grant-only support under the Accelerator shall be provided only once to a beneficiary during the period of implementation of the Programme for a maximum of EUR 2.5 million.

b)blended finance support which is composed of:

ªAn investment component usually in the form of direct equity or quasi-equity such as convertible loans via an investment agreement.

ªA grant component, that will take the form of a lump sum contribution 101 via a grant agreement.

c) investment component only (Equity-Only) usually in the form of direct equity or quasi-equity such as convertible loans via an investment agreement

All successful proposals will receive, in addition to funding, tailor-made access to a wide range of Business Acceleration Services (see Section V).

The 30% co-funding of the work packages to be covered by the grant component has to be financed by the beneficiary through its own resources.

The EIC Accelerator model grant agreement can be found on the Funding & Tenders Portal 102 .

EIC Accelerator investment component (for blended finance and equity only proposals)

The minimum investment component is EUR 0.5 million and the maximum is EUR 10 million 103 . Higher amounts are available under the EIC STEP Scale-up call.      

The investment component is intended to finance market deployment and scale up and it can be requested in parallel to the grant (and may be used for co-financing innovation activities) or at a later stage during the lifetime of their grant agreement. Within the maximum budget awarded by the Commission, the terms of investment will be negotiated on a case-by-case basis 104 in accordance with the EIC Fund Investment Guidelines 105 .

The investment component of the EIC is designed to fill the funding gap for high-risk innovations to a stage where they can be fully co-financed or financed under the InvestEU programme or by private investors alone. As the EIC Accelerator is designed to bear the risk of potential breakthrough market creating innovations in order to attract private investors in a second stage, the lack of such investors at the initial stage does not prevent the EIC investment to be agreed.

When implementing investments, the EIC Fund will ensure that supported companies keep most of their value, including their IP, in the EU or in the Associated Countries in order to contribute to their economic growth and job creation. Where necessary to protect European interests in strategic areas, the EIC Fund will be requested to take appropriate safeguard measures for individual companies on a case-by-case basis in order to protect European interests as defined in the Investment Guidelines (see Introduction, section on economic Security).

EIC Accelerator grant component (for blended finance and grant-only proposals)

Eligible costs for the grant component are reimbursed up to a maximum of 70% within the ceiling of the maximum grant amount, i.e. EUR 2 499 999), but for blended finance the grant component may be for a higher amount in exceptional and well justified cases.

EIC Accelerator grant funding covers innovation activities, including demonstration of the technology in the relevant environment, prototyping and system level demonstration, R&D and testing required to meet regulatory and standardisation requirements, intellectual property management, and marketing approval (e.g. at least TRL 6 106 to 8).

Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum and the amount will be determined during the evaluation process. Applicants must therefore propose the amount of the lump sum based on their estimated project costs as defined in the Decision of 7 July 2021 authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025). 107  

The innovation activities to be supported should normally be completed within 24 months but may be longer in well justified cases. The proposed duration should genuinely reflect your current TRL and the nature of the technology to be developed and demonstrated. The grant component may be used for subcontracting including, only if justified, for activities which are essential for the objectives of the project. The Agency may object to a transfer of ownership or the licensing of results under certain conditions in accordance with the provisions set out in the grant agreement.

How do you apply; how long does it take?

The application process consists of a number of steps:

1.Short proposals which may be submitted at any time, and which will be evaluated remotely by EIC expert evaluators;

2.If successful, you will be invited to prepare a full proposal, where you will have access to support from EIC business coaches to develop your business plan;

3.Full proposals will first be assessed remotely by EIC expert evaluators. If successful, you will be invited to an interview with an EIC jury as the final step in the selection process;

4.If selected for funding, you will be invited to negotiate a grant agreement for the requested grant component (if you have applied for it) and to start the due diligence for the investment component (if you have applied for it).

1. Submission of short proposals

You may submit a short proposal at any time via the Funding & Tenders Portal 108 . The short proposal consists of:

ªA short form where you summarise your proposal and respond to questions on your company and team, your innovation and the potential market;

ªA pitch-deck of up to ten slides in pdf format;

ªA video pitch of up to three minutes where the core members of your team (up to three people) should provide the motivation for your proposal.

All personal data and information in your proposal will be kept strictly confidential. 109 However, before submitting your full proposal, you will be offered the opportunity to share basic data and information with your Member State or Associated Country National Contact Point and other bodies so that they can provide additional support. National Contact Points and other bodies operate under strict confidentiality rules and will only receive the basic information about your proposal (e.g. abstract, funding request, contact details).

Short applications will be batched and sent for evaluation the first Tuesday of every month. From the date of the batching, you will be informed within approximately 4-6 weeks, and you will receive the evaluation result of your short proposal specifying whether or not your proposal met the admissibility, eligibility and award criteria evaluation elements (set out in the next section) and can therefore proceed to submit a full proposal. In both cases, you will receive feedback from four expert evaluators.

2. Submission of full proposals

If your short proposal is successful, you will be entitled to receive coaching support to prepare a full proposal from one of the business coaches from the Business Acceleration Services. 110 You can only receive this support once for a proposal.

The optional coaching support is designed to improve the value proposition, business plan and investor pitch. However, it is your decision how to respond to the feedback and support, and the content of your proposal is your sole responsibility.

If you succeeded with your short application under the 2025 Work programme, your full proposal can be submitted to any of the following cut-offs during 2025, and any of the cut-offs for 2026. Applicants who succeeded with a positive evaluation of their short proposal under the 2023 or 2024 EIC Work Programme may apply to any of the following cut-offs in 2025. You may decide which cut-off to apply to.

The two cut-off dates for 2025 are: 111

ªMarch 12 

ªOctober 1

The cut-off dates for 2026 will be announced in the 2026 Work Programme due to be adopted in Autumn 2025.

The full proposal consists of:

ªa full business plan and full information on the company’s finances and structure of the potential beneficiary/final recipient company. You will also need to propose a set of milestones to be used as a basis for the EIC to manage the funding for your innovation.

ªa pitch-deck in pdf format 112 and a video pitch of up to three minutes. You may decide to reuse or update the pitch-deck and video pitch submitted with your short proposal.

All personal data and information in your proposal will be kept strictly confidential. However, before submitting your full proposal, you will need to give consent to share necessary information with the EIC Fund, if applying for investment.

Likewise, applicants requesting an investment component will be requested to give their consent to the Agency through Business Acceleration Services and the EIC Fund to support the search for suitable investment partners and share the necessary information, including personal and proposal data, with these investment partners.

Once you submit your full proposal, it will be assessed remotely against award criteria evaluation elements (set out in the next section) by three EIC expert evaluators. Within approximately eight to nine weeks 113 you will be informed about the result of the remote evaluation and will receive feedback. If successful, you will be invited to attend an interview (which may be in person or online) with an EIC Jury.

3. Interview with an EIC Jury.

All companies receiving a GO from the remote evaluation stage will be invited to the interviews. In case the number of applicants to invite exceeds the capacities of the initially planned interview sessions, a first batch of applicants will be invited according to the following prioritisation, starting with category ‘a’ (see below), proceeding to the next:

a.Gender balance: women-led companies (until 40% of invited companies is reached);

b.Submission date and time: any remaining companies will be prioritised based on the date and time of submission of their short proposal.

The remaining batch of applicants to the interview will be invited to a later set of jury interviews to be organised before the interviews of the next cut-off date.

Interviews with EIC Juries will be organised approximately four to five weeks after applicants are informed of the result of the remote evaluation (or longer if there is a need for a further set of interviews). Detailed information about the format of the interview will be communicated to you in the invitation. You will be informed about the result of the interview within approximately two to three weeks after the finalisation of the interviews.

The Agency may reimburse the cost of applicants invited to attend on-site interviews during the evaluation of their proposals. This information will be communicated to applicants when invited to the interview.

The Agency aims to complete the full process from submission of the full application (cut-off date for full proposal submission) to signature of the grant agreement within 7 months in most cases.

4. Invitation to negotiate grant component and due diligence process for investment component

If you are selected for funding, the next steps are as follows depending on the type of support.

Grant Only: you will be invited to prepare the grant agreement. Once the grant agreement preparations are concluded, and subject to the adoption of the award decision, you will be invited to sign the EIC Accelerator grant agreement. You will then receive, a first pre-financing payment on the grant component. The Agency will provide the initial pre-financing in accordance with the relevant provisions of the grant agreement.

Blended finance: A single award decision will be adopted by the Commission covering both grant and investment components. The maximum amount for the investment component set in the Single Award Decision will follow the amount requested by the applicant, with an additional flexibility amount of maximum EUR 2 million per proposal. The flexibility amount is to enable the EIC Fund to make an investment decision for a higher amount than requested if justified to take account of developments of the company since the date of application and the opportunity of catalysing a larger overall funding round with co-investors. The additional flexibility amount may only be used if there are sufficient amounts available on the EIC Fund accounts (e.g. due to unused budget from other investments) and will be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Following the award decision and completion of the grant agreement preparations, you will be invited to sign a grant agreement.

The relevant information from your proposal will be transmitted to the EIC Fund and its investment advisor (the European Investment Bank), to structure the potential investment agreement (compliance checks, 114 due diligence, syndication of potential co-investors, tranches of investment and related objectives and milestones, etc.). The EIB will assess with you the relevant timing and urgency of your needs for the investment component which may be immediate, or at a later stage in the grant implementation, or in a number of tranches.

During this stage and, in particular, if you have not yet secured other investors, the EIC Fund or the Business Acceleration Services provided by the Agency will support you in the search for other investors. You will be asked for your consent before other investors are contacted or engaged in negotiations related to your proposal and company.

At the end of this process, which should usually take approximately between two to six months since the selection for funding, an investment component will be decided by the EIC Fund. The decision to invest as well as the amount and the terms of the investment component will be made by the EIC Fund in compliance with the EIC Investment Guidelines. 115  The investment amount decided by the EIC Fund will be within the maximum set by the Single Award Decision, as well as within the total amount available to the EIC Fund for investments. In some cases, the investment decision may lead to amendments to the grant agreement, for example in order to align the timing and definitions of milestones. Lack of progress in the negotiations of the investment component by the beneficiary (and, in particular, insufficient proactive efforts from the beneficiary to attract potential co-investors to invest alongside the EIC Fund) may trigger a suspension of the payment deadlines as per Article 29.1(c) of the Model Grant Agreement.

Should the outcome of the due diligence conclude that the innovation or your company is not yet mature for investment, the EIC Fund may recommend to the Commission that you start with the grant component first, and that the investment component will be subject to reaching defined milestones. In such cases, the EIC Fund will re-examine the due diligence once the defined milestone has been achieved and may then proceed to taking an investment decision. The investment decision must be taken during the grant agreement or within one year after the end of the duration of the grant. If no investment decision is taken during this period, you may subsequently apply for equity-only support.

As an outcome of the due diligence process, the investment may be rejected, notably due to the results of the due diligence, compliance checks, existence of irregularities, in cases of misrepresentation by the applicant or in the case of a manifest error in any previous assessments, in accordance with the EIC Investment guidelines. In such a case, the Agency may also request amendments to the grant agreement. In cases of misrepresentation, submission of false information, non-submission of information, suspicion of fraud or any other ground listed in the EIC Accelerator grant agreement, the Agency may suspend and/or terminate your grant agreement. The EIC Accelerator grant agreement may also be terminated if the non-investment is likely to affect the implementation of the action or puts into question the decision awarding the financial support.

How does the EIC decide if your proposal will be funded?

The EIC Accelerator is highly selective and only the very best proposals can be funded. Your proposal will be assessed on its merits by leading experts and the Commission will ensure open and fair competition to all eligible proposals submitted.

1. Evaluation of short proposals

Short proposals will be evaluated by four EIC expert evaluators. These four evaluators’ competences will match the area of technology and market application of your innovation. The EIC expert evaluators will look at the innovativeness/disruptiveness of your idea, its impact and your team using the evaluation criteria specified below.

Each evaluator will assess whether your short proposal meets each of the evaluation elements (Table 6) and give a GO or NO GO:

ªIf at least three out of the four evaluators give a GO, then your short proposal will be successful, and you will be invited to prepare a full proposal.

ªIf at least two out of the four evaluators give a NO GO, then your proposal is considered unsuccessful and will be rejected. You may resubmit your proposal, according to applicant submission limits (see below section 3). You will be expected to make improvements to your proposal.

2. Evaluation of full proposals: remote evaluation and interviews

Full proposals will be assessed following the cut-off dates listed above. This will start with a remote evaluation where your full proposal will be sent to three EIC expert evaluators (different than the short proposal evaluators) whose expertise will be matched against the area of technology and application of your innovation. The expert evaluators will then assess your proposal against the award criteria and their evaluation elements set out below.

Each evaluator will assess whether your full proposal meets each of the elements of the award criteria and give a GO or NO GO per element:

ªIf all three evaluators give a GO for all the evaluation elements, then your full proposal will be successful, and you will be invited to an interview with an EIC jury.

ªif two of the three evaluators give a GO for all the evaluation elements, then there will be a consensus meeting to decide if you will be invited to an interview with an EIC Jury. For proposals submitted to either the Open or Challenge topics, all three experts must give a GO during the consensus meeting for the proposal to be invited to interview.

ªIf two or more of the evaluators give a NO GO on any of the evaluation elements, then your proposal will be rejected.

The EIC jury will have access to the remote evaluation results of your full proposal but will not have access to your short proposal or the evaluation results of your short proposal and will also not have access to any previous proposals in cases of resubmissions.

EIC Jury members, based on your interview and their overall assessment, will recommend your proposal for funding (GO) or not (NO GO):

ªIf the proposal receives a GO and is recommended for funding, the EIC Jury may recommend providing a lower grant amount than the one requested by the applicant. For the investment component, the EIC jury will not recommend an amount different than the one requested by the applicant but may make observations for consideration by the EIC Fund. The EIC jury will not change the form of support (blended, grant only equity only) but may make recommendations to be taken into account when negotiating the grant or investment component, including for example on the milestones and the valuation, and on proposed coaching activities.

ªIf your proposal receives a NO GO and is not recommended for funding, your proposal will be awarded a Seal of Excellence 117 to facilitate funding from alternative funding sources and access to Business Acceleration Services. Exceptionally, EIC juries may recommend that your proposal does not receive a Seal of Excellence if they find weaknesses in your proposal which were not identified by the expert evaluators at the remote evaluation stage and which mean the proposal does not meet all of the evaluation criteria. In such cases, you will receive feedback to justify this recommendation. 

ªIf your proposal is submitted under one of the STEP-relevant Challenges calls, your project will be awarded the Sovereignty (STEP) Seal 118 , in both cases (i.e. for both GO and NO-GO recommendations). Exceptionally, EIC juries may recommend that your proposal does not receive a Sovereignty (STEP) Seal if they find weaknesses in your proposal which were not identified by the expert evaluators at the remote evaluation stage and which mean the proposal does not meet all of the evaluation criteria. In such cases, you will receive feedback to justify this recommendation.

Following the notification of the outcome of your application, you will receive an official rejection letter (and your Seal of Excellence and Sovereignty (STEP) Seal, if awarded). Seals of Excellence and Sovereignty (STEP) Seals may be funded by national or European programmes for both grant and investment components and may also be supported for only the grant component (even if selected for blended finance).

Member States may decide to transfer budget from ERDF Programmes to Horizon Europe to support EIC Seals of Excellence. In this case the Seals will be directly funded by the Agency for the grant component and the EIC Fund for the investment component; in case the transfer is restricted by the relevant Member State to grant funding only, then applicants will receive “grant only” support even if they were evaluated for blended finance.

Indicatively, the budget for grant components will be allocated approximately equally between the cut-offs. In case the amount allocated to GO applicants is less than the budget available for that cut-off, or additional budget becomes available, then the remaining available budget will be allocated to the subsequent cut-off. In case the amount allocated to GO applicants is above the budget available, then a number of applicants corresponding to the unavailable budget will be awarded funding using the available budget of the subsequent cut-off. Such applicants will be identified using the ordering set out above for the invitation to interviews.

Full proposals will be assessed according to the following award criteria (Table 7). The EIC Jury may focus the interview on any element of your proposal based on the remote evaluation result and its own assessment.

Application submission limits

The EIC Accelerator applies limitations on the number of unsuccessful submissions of the same/improved proposal by the same legal entity. These limitations apply equally to applicants submitted via the Fast Track or Plug In schemes.

After three unsuccessful submissions 119  of the same/improved proposal by the same legal entity to the EIC Accelerator call for Challenges or Open, which can be at any stage of the process (Short Proposal, Full Proposal) and for any form of support (Grant only, Blended finance), an applicant may not apply again to the EIC Accelerator under the Horizon Europe Framework Programme.

In all cases, applicants are expected to take into account the feedback on their previous submission and only reapply if they have made significant improvements.

Approach for follow-on investments by the EIC Fund

The EIC Fund may provide follow on investments in companies that have already been selected and awarded equity support. Such follow-on investments consist of amounts additional to the original maximum amount laid down in the Award Decision or the decision on investment, within a maximum of EUR 10 million 120 and subject to availability of budget. Such follow-on investments will be subject to a project review by external experts (to ensure the evaluation criteria for Accelerator are met), and an amended Award Decision by the European Commission, as well as a renewed assessment (due diligence) by the EIB as investment adviser to the EIC Fund. 121

Such follow-on investments will be limited to the following exceptional categories of cases 122 :

I)Where necessary to secure EU interests which cannot be otherwise protected or in the case of strategic technologies 123 , or

II)If subsequent funding rounds would not proceed or would proceed at significantly less favourable terms without the EIC Fund’s follow-on investment. 

The EIC Fund may also provide investments to companies that received “Grant first” support under the EIC Work Programmes 2021 to 2023, subject to these companies achieving the milestones set for proceeding with the investment component.

The budget for follow on investments and the investment component subsequent to “Grant first” support will come with priority from the follow-on reserve budget as indicated in Annex 1 or from returns generated by EIC Fund investments. In case these budgets are exhausted, available amounts from the budget of this call or from previous amounts allocated to the EIC Fund may be used. In case the budget reserved for follow on investments is not fully used for the above cases, the remaining amount will be transferred to the Accelerator Open call.

Approach in specific cases relating to a parent or holding company and an operating company 124

In some cases of EIC Accelerator it may be necessary for the EIC Fund to invest in the parent or holding company and not in the company that applied for EIC Accelerator support and is the beneficiary of the grant component. This includes cases where the parent or holding company is where all other investors have invested and will invest in the future and where any potential upside will take place.

Applicants should already indicate in their application if they have a parent or holding company for the purposes of the investment component. In such cases the EIC Fund may decide to invest not in the beneficiary but in its parent or holding company if the following conditions are fulfilled:

-the parent or holding company fulfils all relevant criteria, including SME status, non-bankability for the purpose of the EIC Accelerator, and establishment in an EU Member State or Associated County, and

-the EIC Fund Investment Guidelines are followed.

In these cases, and where there is a grant component of support, the grant agreement with the beneficiary will include the parent or holding company as an affiliated entity in its role as investee. 125

Indirect management of the investment component of the EIC Accelerator

In line with Article 11(3) of Council Decision 2021/764/EU establishing the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe, the Commission has entrusted tasks related to the implementation and management of the investment component of the EIC Accelerator to the European Investment Bank as the implementing partner for an indicative budget for investment amounts as shown in Annex 1.

IV.1    EIC Accelerator Open

EIC Accelerator Open has no predefined thematic priorities and is open to proposals in any field of technology or application.

If an application to the Open call falls within the scope of the Challenges topics below, grant funding is subject to eligibility in accordance with the specific conditions applicable to those topics:

-GenAI4EU: Creating European Champions in Generative AI

-Innovative in-space servicing, operations, space-based robotics and technologies for resilient EU space infrastructure

Furthermore, in case of an investment support for applications in the areas of AI, quantum, semiconductors and biotechnology, specific safeguards may be introduced in the investment agreement (see Introduction, section on Economic Security as well as Annex 2).

IV.2    EIC Accelerator Challenges

The total indicative budget for EIC Accelerator Challenges is EUR 250 million. However, in case of underutilisation, this amount is subject to the following conditions on budget flexibility and potential transfers to the EIC Accelerator Open: if there are insufficient applications selected for funding for a Challenge, the budget will be transferred to the other Challenges; in case there are insufficient applications selected for all the Challenges, the remaining budget will be transferred to the Accelerator Open. 126

The Accelerator Challenges have been identified in areas where breakthrough technologies or game-changing innovations developed by start-ups or SMEs can have a major impact on EU objectives. In 2025, these objectives include the AI Act, Net Zero Industry Act, the Communications on Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing, and on Advanced Materials, as well as the list of critical technologies identified in the strategy on Economic Security.

All Challenge applicants are encouraged to develop synergies with relevant activities under other Horizon Europe Work Programmes.

In 2025 support for start-ups in semiconductor technologies and quantum technologies will be pursued in particular through the STEP Scale Up call which foresees larger investments targeting strategic technologies including in support of the Chips Act. The EIC Accelerator Open call remains available in general for startups and SMEs including for quantum and semiconductor technologies .

All the Accelerator Challenges included in the 2025 EIC Work Programme support technologies that fall within the scope and objectives 127 of the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) legislation. Hence, applicants to all Challenges will be awarded the Sovereignty (STEP) Seal in accordance with the provisions in Section IV.

IV.2.1 Acceleration of advanced materials development and upscaling along the value chain

Background and scope

Advanced Materials are defined as materials that are engineered with a view to enhancing functional performance above and beyond that of existing materials 128 . They are key enablers for the development of game-changing products and innovative solutions in many industrial sectors, such as energy, mobility, electronics, and construction.

As stated in the European Commission Communication “Advanced Materials for Industrial Leadership” 129 , there is an urgent need to boost all the stages of development of advanced materials, such as their design, scale-up and manufacturing capacity (from lab to fab), as demand for these materials is expected to increase significantly in the coming years.

This requires investment to identify and bring breakthrough innovations to the market that cover the full value chain from developers and producers of advanced materials alongside those companies developing digital tools for designing, synthesising, modelling and characterising advanced materials including those supported by Artificial Intelligence / machine learning.

This Challenge therefore aims at scaling SMEs belonging to the whole value chain of advanced materials and addressing one or more of these four key application areas: energy, mobility, electronics, construction. It contributes to a common European approach in accelerating the scaling up of advanced materials, a critical technology identified under the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) 130 , and thereby addresses the risks to the EU’s future strategic autonomy in this area.

Specific objectives

Companies supported under this Challenge should target one or both of the following areas, taking into account the Safe and Sustainable by Design framework, including Life Cycle Assessment and circularity approaches:

·Technologies for design, synthesis, characterisation, up-scaling, and production of advanced materials.

·Scaling up processes to reach the targeted functionalities or improved performance of advanced materials, such as surface functionalization of nanoparticles, or additive manufacturing approaches which may enable a fast integration of the advanced materials into smart devices.

The advanced materials and associated processes in the above mentioned four key application areas must be developed minimizing the use of resources, in particular critical raw materials (CRMs), and the environmental footprint. The latter is to be measured with a life-cycle analysis that includes an evaluation of the cost and social impact.

Expected outcomes and impacts:

In support of the Commission Communication on Advanced Materials for Industrial Leadership 131 , the European Green Deal industrial plan 132 , the New European Innovation Agenda 133 , Digital Europe 134 and the EU Economic Security Strategy 135 , this Challenge is expected to:

·Strengthen the European value chain of advanced materials in the energy, mobility, electronics, and construction application areas.

·Enable a more diversified, digitally driven, and risk-aware configuration of the European advanced materials value chain and associated processes and technologies.

·Accelerate market uptake of advanced materials in the energy, mobility, electronics, and construction industrial sectors.

·Address the EU’s industrial dependency on imports of resources, such as CRMs, for the energy, mobility, electronics, and construction sectors.

Companies selected for support under this Challenge will become part of the wider advanced materials ecosystem to be fostered by the different actions set out in the Advanced Materials for Industrial Leadership, amongst these the new co-programmed partnership IAM4EU 136 .

Indicative budget: EUR 50 million

IV.2.2 Biotechnology driven low emission food and feed production systems

Background and scope

Agriculture is the source of 11% of total EU greenhouse gas emissions, including over 54% of all methane (CH4) emissions. It is also the source of 94% of all ammonia (NH3) emissions. Livestock generates GHG emissions from enteric fermentation (CH4) and from manure management (CH4 and N2O), contributing respectively to 48% and 17% of total agricultural emissions. Furthermore, current agricultural practices that feature an inefficient use of mineral fertilizers and pesticides also have a highly detrimental effect on the biosphere and biodiversity.

Radically decreasing GHG emissions and the wider environmental footprint of the food production system requires further action on several fronts. In keeping with the ambitions of the Commission Communication on Building the future with nature: Boosting Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing in the EU 137 , a critical technology identified under the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) 138 , this Challenge focuses on supporting novel biotechnology driven solutions in four areas, (see Specific Objectives) which can in combination offer a GHG mitigation potential of nearly 1.5 billion tons (tCO2e) 139 , through approaches that:

·Replace fossil fuels in the production of pesticides and fertilizers used in agriculture;

·Achieve efficiency in resource use and support the deployment of climate smart agriculture (including livestock) technologies for sustainable food and feed production;

·Mitigate enteric methane emissions from ruminants and reduce the environmental impact associated with some agricultural and animal farming practices;

·Expand conventional food and feed production.

Specific Objectives

The start-ups and SMEs to be supported under this initiative must focus on one (or more) of the following areas:

·Biotechnology for biopesticides 140 , bio-stimulants, and fertilizers of microbial origin: This strand focuses on scaling breakthroughs in the use of microorganisms or their biological components, and enzymatic or other biotechnology-based processes using biomass residues/waste streams in an innovative and sustainable way for the production of renewable materials thus contributing to the circular economy and preserving biodiversity.

·Biotechnology to support precision crop and livestock farming: This covers approaches that could for example leverage new plant breeding technologies or enhance desirable traits through biotechnology to complement, and be integrated with, precision crop and livestock farming approaches to help increase yields and animal performance while reducing costs and optimising process inputs while reducing waste streams.

·Biotechnology for ruminant methane mitigation: This includes approaches such as novel feed components, feed processing for digestibility, advanced feed additives and selective breeding, where compatible with livestock production system of EU animal welfare standards

·Biotechnology for feed and food production: This focuses on precision fermentation for the sustainable production of food and feed ingredients traditionally derived from animal or plant sources.

Regardless of the specific area addressed, companies are encouraged to leverage digital tools such as AI, as appropriate, to facilitate the development of processes and make the resulting products and services suitable for integration into existing production systems.

All projects must provide a lifecycle assessment (LCA) considering environmental, social and economic consideration. Proposals are also expected to consider regulatory aspects alongside issues surrounding consumer acceptance and articulate suitable strategies to support market entry within and beyond the EU.

Expected Outcomes and Impact

In support of the Commission Communication on Building the future with nature: Boosting Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing in the EU 141 , Mission Soil 142 , the EU Green Deal 143 , Farm to Fork strategy 144 , Fit for 55 145 and REPowerEU 146 policy actions, the Nature Restoration Law 147  and the Communication on Ensuring availability and affordability of fertilisers 148 , this Challenge aims to improve the sustainability, efficiency, and resilience of the European agri-food sector. By targeting breakthrough solutions, it will also support Europe’s future strategic autonomy and enhance the competitiveness of Europe’s agricultural sector by helping it overcome challenges linked to climate change and environment stresses including biodiversity loss and pollution.

Indicative budget: EUR 50 million

IV.2.3 GenAI4EU: Creating European Champions in Generative AI

Background and scope

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are already delivering significant improvements in healthcare, aiding climate change mitigation and adaptation, enhancing production systems through predictive maintenance, and increasing the security of European citizens and business, generative AI (GenAI) is expected to revolutionize these fields further. GenAI promises a transformative impact on our daily lives by significantly advancing capabilities across various domains.

GenAI however still faces notable challenges, such as unexplained inaccuracies (i.e., hallucinations) and a lack of transparency and accountability in decision-making, which undermines trust and poses questions regarding the safety and reliability of the systems. These are even more critical in the case of more advanced applications, needing greater scale and integration within user workflows, particularly in sensitive or safety-critical settings like clinical workflows or the management of critical infrastructures.

In line with the AI innovation package 149 supporting Artificial Intelligence startups and SMEs, and with the EU AI Act 150 , targeted at the development, deployment and take-up of trustworthy AI in the EU, this Challenge contributes to fostering a European, human-centric approach to AI, that embodies EU values and works towards guaranteeing Europe’s tech sovereignty in a critical technology area identified under the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) 151 .

The aim of this Challenge is to support start-ups and SMEs committed to bringing transformative AI-driven solutions to market. The proposed solutions should safeguard human autonomy and enhance human expertise thus providing significant added value to decision-making processes, services or industrial workflows. Novel solutions with broad future applicability are particularly encouraged.

Specific Objectives

This Challenge will support start-ups and SMEs that are either:

·Further developing and validating new GenAI models; 

·Adapting existing models to specific sectors or types of data where smaller faster and more energy-efficient models would also be applicable; or 

·Integrating and testing the GenAI solutions in existing workflows, and testing these in regulatory sandboxes and real-life settings, including certification and post-market surveillance, as appropriate.

The developed models must go beyond the state of the art and must look to overcome the current difficulties that limit the extent to which they support human expertise with a particular focus on one of the following areas, and in line with the sectors and applications listed in the AI communication 152 :

-Healthcare: radiology is a frontrunner in the use of GenAI, but current solutions suffer from a lack of trust and integration with clinical workflows, which must be overcome to advance automatic radiology reporting and enhance human-AI interaction while reducing interpretation errors and associated variability.

-Energy: the integration of GenAI in managing the power grid, alongside the storage and use of renewables by grid operators, for example, calls for high quality, reliable AI systems that deliver safe, real-time decision making to enhance resilience and planning.

-Security: security professionals including those operating critical infrastructures can scale their work in threat and vulnerability detection and the subsequent response to such threats, with the support of fault-tolerant, high quality and secure AI systems. 

-Public sector: leveraging GenAI to improve the quality, ease of access and efficiency of public services, or to increase the efficiency of public administration services and productivity.

-Cultural and Creative Sectors and Industries: Gen AI systems targeted to the needs of these sectors, catering for cultural and linguistic diversity and ensuring transparency and full respect and recognition of artists and creators rights.

-Manufacturing: systems to enable mass customisation, enhance sustainability and automation, propose options for design and identify maintenance needs. 

- Education: Use of GenAI systems and assistants to enable personalised and adaptive learning experiences, enhancing educational outcomes and accessibility.

-Science: Leveraging GenAI to drive new levels of productivity and capability for researchers in both the private and public sectors, fostering innovation and scientific advancements.

Expected Outcomes and Impact

This Challenge will support the further development and validation of Gen AI models and/or downstream applications, which are “European-Value driven” and contributes to the ambitions of the AI Act 153 and the European approach to Artificial Intelligence 154 . The AI models developed under this Challenge are expected to comply with the EU concept for Trustworthy AI and the relevant ethical principles with due attention paid to data quality, transparency & accountability, privacy, and security.

In the medium to longer term, it is expected to reduce dependencies and support companies in leveraging the advances in generative AI, enhance their products and develop new ones that:

·Optimise existing workflows: utilising Generative AI technologies to streamline and improve operational processes across various industries;

·Enhance human capabilities: Applying advanced AI models to enhance decision-making, creativity, and productivity;

·Are validated for application: Ensuring that the AI models are both advanced and thoroughly validated for practical applicability and scalability in real-world scenarios.

The selected beneficiaries will receive favourable access to European supercomputing resources for the training of their large foundation models, in the context of the AI Factories in line with the EuroHPC regulation 155 . In addition, they may benefit from additional actions aimed at creating strategic partnerships with major industries or attracting further capital. Where relevant, opportunities may be explored to provide the selected beneficiaries with access to scientific datasets through the European Open Science Cloud or to provide users of the European Open Science Cloud with access to the tools developed by the beneficiaries.

Specific conditions

Any technology under this Challenge must be developed in a robust manner, paying specific attention to safety, security and ethics considerations in future applications.

In order to achieve the expected outcomes, and safeguard the Union’s strategic assets, interests, autonomy, and security, it is important to avoid a situation of technological dependency on a non-EU source, in a global context that requires the EU to take action to build on its strengths, and to carefully assess and address any strategic weaknesses, vulnerabilities and high-risk dependencies which put at risk the attainment of its ambitions. Projects under this challenge will contribute to ensure autonomy for Europe in AI and developing world-class technologies serving the needs of all types of European industries providing top-performing solutions that industries will trust and adopt to maintain their competitiveness. The contribution of these projects will be key for the development of European industry in the area of AI. For this reason, and in line with Article 136 of the Financial Regulation 156 , recipients of the grant and of the equity component of Accelerator funding 157 158 must not be directly or indirectly controlled by a non-associated third country or a legal entity established in a non-associated third country other than such third countries or legal entities established in OECD member countries, Mercosur member countries countries with which the EU cooperates under a Trade and Technology Council, and countries with which the EU has a Digital Partnership  159 .

Furthermore, in case of an investment support, specific safeguards may be introduced in the investment agreement (see Introduction, section on Economic Security).

Indicative budget: EUR 50 million

IV.2.4 Innovative in-space servicing, operations, robotics and technologies for resilient EU space infrastructure

Background and scope

Satellites are currently designed, built and launched into space without the functionalities to be serviced, repaired, upgraded or refuelled. In combination with recent trends this has resulted in:

·Reduced operational lifetime of satellites due to collision avoidance manoeuvres;

·Growing debris due to increased number of satellites, launch anomalies, fragmentation events or explosions in orbit; and

·The need for in-space mobility, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO) transfer capabilities and the necessity to preserve orbital slots.

Furthermore, these spacecrafts are exposed to a number of space-based threats, such as cyber, signal spoofing, Radio Frequency (RF) interferences, jamming and intrusion that must be anticipated to ensure a resilient EU space-based infrastructure.

Approaches that extend the lifetime and protect in space infrastructure can thus offer both essential resilience and significant cost savings for satellite operators and less debris in space. However, despite the emerging commercial trend for in-orbit servicing, Europe lacks cost-effective, cyber-secure, scalable, and resilient capabilities that can deliver autonomous space operations. This encompasses the use of in-space robotics to inspect, dock, capture and extend the lifetime of satellites. Such critical capabilities have increasing strategic importance considering the development of the next generation of flexible, serviceable and resilient spacecraft that will require such capabilities.

This Challenge therefore focuses on supporting companies developing cost-effective, scalable and resilient solutions to service and/or augment satellite capabilities, perform in-orbit refuelling, contribute to space debris reduction, and protect EU space infrastructure. It develops capabilities in areas such as cyber security control technologies, satellite-based secure connectivity, robots and robot-controlled precision systems identified under the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) 160 , and thereby addresses risks to the EU’s future strategic autonomy.

Specific objectives

The start-ups and SMEs to be supported under this initiative must deliver solutions that address one of the following areas:

·In-Orbit Servicing & Maintenance – This focuses on technologies to extend the lifetime of satellites, reduce the number of dysfunctional satellites and address deployment anomalies in orbit. It covers the full spectrum of activity including inspection and maintenance, Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPOs), capture and docking alongside repair or the augmentation/ reconfiguration of satellite capabilities.

·In-space transportation – This covers refuelling and recharging of spacecraft in orbit, in-space mobility from LEO to GEO, orbital transfer vehicles and cost-efficient propulsion for in-space mobility of spacecraft.

·Space-based resilience – This includes technologies that address space-based cybersecurity threats for satcom, navigation, Earth Observation and In Orbit servicing missions. It covers technologies tackling space-based cyber threats such as encryption, frequency hopping, radio frequency fingerprinting, secure on-board processing capabilities, AI for cybersecurity for autonomous RPO and ones related to Space Situational Awareness, space weather and space debris impacts.

Expected outcomes and impact

This challenge contributes to the strategic autonomy of the EU and to Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda for Space R&I 161 , the EU Approach to Space Traffic Management 162 , the EU In-Orbit Demonstration and Validation initiative (IOD/IOV) 163 and planned initiatives such as the in-Space Operations and Services (ISOS) pilot mission under the Act in Space activities 164 ,  notably by contributing satAPPs 165 or other component plug-ins to the ISOS Pilot Mission.

By developing and scaling up affordable and resilient in-space technologies the Challenge is expected to:

·help enhance the resilience of European space infrastructure while extending their lifetime and contribute to the management and reduction of space debris.

·increase the competitiveness of European companies in In-orbit satellites servicing (IOS), In-space assembly and manufacturing (ISAM) and Active Debris Removal (ADR) domains.

·contribute to supporting the scaling up of technologies for in-orbit satellite servicing and maintenance, in-space transportation and space-based cybersecurity resilience.

·generate new business opportunities, while delivering significant cost-savings for satellite owners and operators who will find viable approaches to inspect, protect and extend the operational lifetime of their satellites while reducing space debris.

Specific conditions

In order to achieve the expected outcomes, and safeguard the Union’s strategic assets, interests, and security, it is important to avoid a situation of technological dependency on a non-EU source, in a global context that requires the EU to take action to build on its strengths, and to carefully assess and address any strategic weaknesses, vulnerabilities and high-risk dependencies which put at risk the attainment of its ambitions. Projects under this Challenge will contribute to ensure open strategic autonomy in developing, deploying and using global space-based infrastructures, services applications and data, including by reinforcing European independent capacity to access space, securing the autonomy of supply for critical technologies and equipment, and fostering the EU's space sector competitiveness. For this reason, and in line with Article 136 of the Financial Regulation 166 , recipients of the grant and of the equity component of Accelerator funding 167 must not be directly or indirectly controlled by a non-associated third country or a legal entity established in a non-associated third country. 

Furthermore, in case of an investment support, specific safeguards may be introduced in the investment agreement (see Introduction, section on Economic Security).

Indicative budget: EUR 50 million

IV.2.5 Breakthrough innovations for future mobility

Background and scope

The European Union has charted a path to climate neutrality by 2050 with an ambition to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. The transport sector, including road transport, aviation, waterborne and rail, has however been steadily increasing its emissions at an average yearly rate of 1.7% since 1990. The resulting emissions are also one of the main contributors to environmental and health problems, which are particularly acute in urban areas.

The Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy 168 includes an action plan to deliver on a 90% cut in mobility emissions by 2050, delivered by a smart, competitive, safe, accessible, and affordable transport system. This encompasses all road vehicles, aircraft, rail, waterborne vessels, infrastructure and new mobility services in increasingly climate-neutral cities and rural areas.

The electrification of road transport alongside the increasing electrification and use of zero and low carbon fuels of waterborne transport and aviation are expected to reduce these emissions, but further breakthroughs beyond the drivetrain are needed to deliver an effective and safe low emission transport system.

This Challenge therefore focuses on supporting companies developing cost-effective and scalable deep tech breakthroughs that will help deliver reductions in mobility-related emissions in its many facets, from the manufacture of vehicles to their use. It also includes approaches that deliver improvements in the efficiency of the transport system through for example the use of digital tools. It thereby develops capabilities in areas such as sensing, manufacturing and resource efficient technologies alongside sustainable alternative fuels identified under the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) 169 , and thereby addresses risks to the EU’s future strategic autonomy.

Energy vectors based on electrification and hydrogen fall outside the scope of this Challenge call but can be supported through the Open calls. However, digital tools for charging and capacity management are in scope.

Specific objectives

The start-ups and SMEs to be supported under this Challenge must focus on developing cost-effective and scalable solutions that deliver against at least one of the following areas:

·Breakthroughs in the design, manufacture, assembly and operation of road vehicles, waterborne vessels, aircraft, or rail that contribute significantly to reduce their environmental footprint;

·Disruptive technologies that contribute to increase operational efficiencies and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, secondary and other harmful emissions and noise for Heavy Duty road vehicles, waterborne vessels, aircraft or rail, multimodal transport and/or their related infrastructure;

·Sustainable fuels for hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation and maritime, including retrofitting solutions; and

·Breakthroughs in the development and integration of digital tools ranging from sensors to the application of Artificial Intelligence to enhance autonomous transport solutions and more sustainable energy use on land, water or in the air, improve the connectivity and efficiency of vehicles and the transport system including capacity management, and smart and bi-directional charging functionalities.

Projects must take into account the Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) framework 170 , including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and circularity approaches.

Companies selected under this Challenge will become part of the ecosystem fostered under the European industrial partnerships in the areas of Clean Aviation, Towards zero-emission road transport (2ZERO), Connected, Cooperative and Automated Driving (CCAM), Zero-emission waterborne transport and Transforming Europe's rail system. Furthermore, connections with the Industrial Alliance “Renewable and Low-Carbon Fuels Value Chain” 171  will be encouraged.

Expected outcomes and impact

This Challenge contributes to the strategic autonomy to the EU, the objectives of the European Green Deal 172 , the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy 173 and the Net-Zero Industry Act 174 , which seeks to foster the EU’s net-zero technology industrial base - products, components, and equipment necessary for manufacturing net-zero technologies - to deliver an affordable, reliable, and sustainable clean transport system.

By developing and scaling up breakthrough innovations for future mobility, the Challenge is expected to:

·increase the competitiveness and economic autonomy or security of European companies across the mobility value chain; 

·support the scaling up of technologies that materially reduce mobility-related emissions, including a quantification on how they reduce emissions or increase efficiency of transport, or provide more affordable or inclusive mobility;

·deliver improvements in accessibility, safety, security, connectivity, flexibility and efficiency of the transport system including new mobility services and models;

·develop new skills and create jobs in the EU.

Indicative budget: EUR 50 million

V.EIC Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale Up Call 175

vDoes your company have a game-changing innovative technology focused on the development and commercialisation of a strategic technology for Europe in digital and deep tech, cleantech or biotech?

vHas your company already secured an initial investment, and is now looking to raise a major funding round to scale up rapidly and become a global leader?

vDoes the successful commercialisation and scaling or your technology/ innovation represent significant risks which mean that it cannot be sufficiently financed from the market investors?

If you answered yes to all questions, then the EIC Strategic Technology for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale Up call could be your launchpad to success. This call provides significant funding to fuel groundbreaking innovation in strategic technologies 176 , propelling Europe's economic, industrial, and technological competitiveness. This is a new call that has been introduced as a pilot action following the STEP Regulation 177 to address an important market gap in financing deep tech scale up companies in Europe and to inform decisions on future support.

Why should you apply?

The EIC STEP Scale Up call presents a unique opportunity for ambitious scale up companies (SMEs and small mid-caps) with game-changing innovations in Europe's critical technology areas. It offers a powerful combination of financial and strategic support designed to propel your groundbreaking solution to the forefront of these sectors.

The companies selected under the EIC STEP Scale Up call can receive investments ranging from EUR 10 to EUR 30 million. This investment can significantly accelerate the development and market launch of your technology, product, or service. With this funding, you'll gain the power to disrupt established markets and forge new ones across Europe, potentially achieving significant global impact. Crucially, this investment is designed to catalyse major funding rounds, e.g. in the range of EUR 50 to 150 million, and at least 3-5 times the EIC investment.

This call is part of the implementation of the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP)) 178  which supports the development or manufacturing of critical technologies throughout the Union or safeguarding and strengthening their respective value chains. Besides, support from the EIC, the projects may be eligible for support under other EU programmes included in STEP.

In 2025 support for start-ups in semiconductor technologies and quantum technologies will be pursued in particular through the STEP Scale Up call which foresees larger investments targeting strategic technologies including in support of the Chips Act. The EIC Accelerator Open call remains available in general for startups and SMEs including for quantum and semiconductor technologies.

Can you apply?

In order to apply, your innovation must be within the scope of the priority areas defined in the STEP regulation 179 and further developed in the Guidance note 180  

a.Digital technologies 181 , and deep tech innovations. This includes: advanced semiconductor technologies; artificial intelligence technologies; quantum technologies; advanced connectivity, navigation and digital technologies; advanced sensing technologies; robotics and autonomous systems; Deep tech innovations (see Glossary).

b.Clean and resource efficient technologies, including net-zero technologies. This includes: solar technologies; onshore wind and offshore renewable technologies; battery and energy storage technologies; heat pumps and geothermal technologies; hydrogen technologies; sustainable biogas and biomethane technologies; carbon capture and storage technologies; electricity grid technologies; nuclear fission technologies, sustainable alternative fuel technologies; hydropower technologies; other renewable technologies; energy system -related energy efficiency technologies; renewable fuels of non-biological origin technologies; biotech climate and energy solutions; transformative industrial technologies for decarbonisation; CO2 transport and utilisation technologies; wind and electric propulsion technologies; other nuclear technologies; advanced materials, manufacturing and recycling technologies, technologies vital to sustainability such as water purification and desalination; and circular economy technologies.

c.Biotechnologies, including medicinal products on the Union list of critical medicines and their components. Including DNA/RNA; proteins and other molecules; cell and tissue culture and engineering; process biotechnology techniques; Gene and RNA vectors; bioinformatics; and nanobiotechnology.

These technologies are deemed critical where they meet either of the following conditions:

a.they bring to the internal market an innovative, emerging and cutting-edge element with significant economic potential;

b.they contribute to reducing or preventing strategic dependencies of the Union.

The Commission Guidance Note , concerning certain provisions of STEP Regulation adopted on May 2024, provides detailed information on the criticality conditions.

This call targets companies raising significant funding rounds and you must demonstrate an initial market interest such that the EIC investment acts as a catalyst for larger funding rounds.

You will therefore need to demonstrate that the company already has a pre-commitment 182  for an equity investment which meets the following elements:

vThe pre-commitment is from a qualified investor 183 , . 

vThe pre-commitment represents at least 20% of the total target funding round you are aiming to raise.

The following entities are eligible to apply:

vA single company classified as a SME or small mid-cap (up to 499 employees) established within a Member State or an Associated Country (see Annex 2). The company may have a holding entity for the purposes of the investment, and this holding company must also be established in a Member State or an Associated Country.

vAn investor may submit a proposal on behalf of an eligible SME or small mid-cap as defined above, provided that a prior agreement exists with the company. The investment agreement will be signed with the selected SME or small mid-cap.

The applicable admissibility and eligibility conditions are detailed in Annex 2 unless otherwise stated in this call. 

Specific conditions

In order to achieve the expected outcomes, and safeguard the Union’s strategic assets, interests, autonomy, and security, it is important to avoid a situation of technological dependency on a non-EU source, in a global context that requires the EU to take action to build on its strengths, and to carefully assess and address any strategic weaknesses, vulnerabilities and high-risk dependencies which put at risk the attainment of its ambitions. The scope of this call follows the identification of priority technology areas where there is a need to reduce or prevent strategic dependencies of the Union, in line with EU strategic and security interests. For this reason, and in line with Article 136 of the Financial Regulation 184 , recipients of the Accelerator funding 185 under this call, must not be directly or indirectly controlled by a non-associated third country or a legal entity established in a non-associated third country. 

Furthermore, in case of an investment support, specific safeguards may be introduced in the investment agreement (see Introduction, section on Economic Security). 

What support will you receive if your proposal is funded?   

The EIC STEP Scale Up call offers a total indicative budget of EUR 300 million for the 2025, which is expected to rise to EUR 900 million for the period 2025-2027 186 . Any unused amount from this budget will be allocated with priority to the EIC Accelerator Open call. 187

The support will be in the form of equity-only investments managed by the EIC Fund. Applicants to this call will not receive a grant component. It provides significant financial support, and applicants should apply for an investment of a minimum of EUR 10 million 188  and maximum of EUR 30 million, to co-invest in a funding round aiming at least three to five times the amount of the requested EIC contribution. The specific terms of each investment are considered and negotiated on a case-by-case basis in accordance with the EIC Fund Investment Guidelines. This ensures the investment is tailored to your company's needs while aligning with EIC's objectives.

EIC STEP Scale Up is designed to fill the funding gap for companies to invest in the scale up of high-risk innovations and where the amount needed for the scale up cannot be fully financed by other investors, including Invest EU implementing partners. Applicants are encouraged to consider complementarity with Venture Debt from InvestEU implementing partners in order to meet their financing needs.

When implementing investments, the EIC Fund will ensure that supported companies keep most of their value, including their IP, in the EU or in the Associated Countries in order to contribute to their economic growth and job creation. Where necessary, the EIC Fund will be requested to take appropriate safeguard measures for individual companies on a case-by-case basis in order to protect European interests as defined in the Investment Guidelines.

Beyond funding, your company will benefit from a strong support system that fosters your continued growth within Europe through Business Acceleration Services (details available in Section V). Applicants to the EIC STEP Scale Up call who meet the evaluation thresholds will also be awarded a Sovereignty (STEP) Seal, to facilitate and provide privileged access to funding and support from other EU programmes and other funders and investors 189 .

How do you apply; how long does it take? 

You may submit an application to the EIC STEP Scale Up call at any time. The evaluations of applications submitted will be organised at regular intervals depending on the number of applications, with at least one per quarter or more frequently in urgent cases. You must submit your proposal via the EU Funding and Tenders Portal.

1.Submission of proposals

The proposal consists of: 

va full business plan, including information on the company’s ownership and financial structure and a justification on the STEP related objectives (maximum 50 pages);

va pitch-deck (maximum 15 pages) in pdf format;  

va pre-commitment from a qualified investor (according to a template available on the EIC website); 

vAn ownership control declaration.

All personal data and information in your proposal will be kept strictly confidential. However, before submitting your full proposal, you will need to give consent to share necessary information with the EIC Fund.

In addition, you will be asked as part of your application whether your company would be interested in Venture Debt support from InvestEU implementing partners 190 . 

Upon submission, your proposal will be assessed if it meets the criteria set out above in terms of whether it falls within scope of the STEP technologies; the pre-commitment from a qualified investor; and the eligibility of the applicant entity.

The investment adviser to the EIC Fund, may be requested to support assessment regarding the pre-commitment from a qualified investor.

If your application meets the eligibility requirements, including that the application is within the scope of the STEP priority areas and the requirement for a pre-commitment by a qualified investor, you will be invited to attend a jury interview. It is expected that you will be informed about the interview within approximately 4-6 weeks from the start of the evaluation process.

2.Interviews with an EIC Jury 

At the interview, you will be assessed by a Jury of maximum six members (see Glossary). Detailed information about the format of the interview will be communicated to you in the invitation.

You will be informed about the result of the interview within approximately two weeks from the date of the interview.  

If you are successful, an ownership control assessment will be conducted to assess the eligibility of your company to receive EIC STEP Scaleup support.

An award decision will be adopted by the Commission which will authorise a maximum amount of investment by the EIC Fund which will follow the amount requested in the application, with an additional flexibility amount of maximum EUR 5 million per proposal. The flexibility amount is to enable the EIC Fund to make an investment decision for a higher amount than requested if justified to take account of developments of the company since the date of application and the opportunity of catalysing a larger overall funding round with co-investors. The additional flexibility amount may only be used if there are sufficient amounts available on the EIC Fund accounts (e.g., due to budget available from other investments).

The relevant information from your proposal will be passed to the investment adviser for the EIC Fund, to proceed with the detailed due diligence and subject to a positive due diligence and subsequent EIC Fund Investment Committee decision, the investment agreement.

If you have expressed an interest and given consent, the relevant information from your proposal will be passed to the relevant InvestEU implementing partners to consider for Venture Debt support.

How does the EIC decide if your proposal will be selected for a potential investment by the EIC Fund?  

Your proposal will be assessed on its merits by leading experts and the Commission will ensure open and fair competition to all eligible proposals submitted.  

The EIC STEP Scale Up call utilizes a "first come, first served" approach to evaluate proposals. However, juries will be asked to take account of overall budget availability for the full year and will be limited to recommend proposals amounting to no more than 70% of the available budget for the calendar year within the first six months of the year. The Jury will be informed about budget availability, including additional amounts that may be available due to previous amounts awarded that were not fully used.

Proposals will be assessed according to the following award criteria (Table 8). The EIC Jury may focus the interview on any element of your proposal based on its own assessment. 

The EIC Jury members, based on your interview and their overall assessment, will recommend one of three outcomes for your proposal:

vGO and Sovereignty (STEP) Seal:

Your proposal meets all of the evaluation criteria (see below) and is recommended for a potential equity investment. The Jury may provide observations for consideration by the EIC Fund regarding the investment amount or other considerations for the investment decision or management. It is important to remember that investment amounts authorised in the Commission Award Decision are subject to successful completion of the due diligence and negotiation by the EIC Fund according to the Investment Guidelines, and investment amounts may be reduced or rejected by the EIC Fund for justified reasons.

Your project will also be awarded the Sovereignty (STEP) Seal and will have access to Business Acceleration Services.

vNO GO and Sovereignty (STEP) Seal 191 :

Your proposal meets all of the evaluation criteria (see below) but is not recommended due to the lack of budget availability.

Your project will be awarded the Sovereignty (STEP) Seal and access to Business Acceleration Services.

vNO GO:

Your proposal does not meet all the evaluation criteria required for funding. You will receive detailed feedback outlining the areas where your proposal fell short to help you improve for future applications.

The Jury may also provide recommendations regarding a potential resubmission, or not, of your application and improvements needed.

VI.Business Acceleration Services 

The Business Acceleration Services (BAS) provide EIC Awardees and other eligible organisations with services aiming at matching with business partners, gaining new contacts and skills they need to bring their innovations to the market and grow their businesses. BAS is a distinctive feature of the EIC that enables it to provide not only “money”, but “smart money”.

BAS services are procured from external contractors or delivered by selected ecosystem partners via the EIC Service Catalogue . They consist mainly of business coaching, business advice, networking opportunities to expand the client base and to find co-investors, and access to testing/scaleup facilities. The BAS services are also part of the tools available to EIC Programme Managers and EIC Project Officers to proactively manage the EIC portfolios. 

The BAS are tailored to EIC Awardees needs and should adapt quickly to the changing nature of markets and overall economic environment. The flexibility for piloting new services and approaches and adapting or even stopping the ones that are not efficient is built in all BAS implementing contracts.

The following entities are eligible to receive BAS services:

ªAll EIC Awardees (from the EIC Accelerator, EIC Transition, EIC Pathfinder, EIC STEP Scaleup) including beneficiaries and associated partners of EIC grants and recipients of EIC Fund Investments. This includes such Awardees with support awarded under the EIC Pilot and the Phase 2 of the SME Instrument under Horizon 2020;

ªCompanies selected under the EIC Scale Up100 initiative;

ªWomen TechEU Awardees;

ª Pre-Accelerator call Awardees 192 , who will receive a dedicated programme including coaching and one-to-one services aiming at increasing their investment readiness and outreach as well as participation to bootcamps and pitching sessions; 

ªHorizon Europe Seal of Excellence and Sovereignty (STEP) Seal holders awarded under EIC calls;

ªHorizon Europe Seal of Excellence holders awarded under the Pre-accelerator;

ªApplicants to the EIC Accelerator who have succeeded at the short application stage or submitted through the Fast Track or Plug In schemes (see Annex 4 and 5) are eligible to receive 3 days of coaching.

Unless otherwise specified in the specific calls, above mentioned groups of eligible entities can apply to BAS through open calls published on the EIC Community Platform . The selection is done based on assessment from business partners or market experts or on a first come first served basis.

A core set of BAS includes:

ªAccess to high quality, topic, or sector specific services from EIC Ecosystem Partners (see Glossary), for example incubation and acceleration programmes, legal and IP expertise, testing and research infrastructure and many more as well as services specifically designed in collaboration with EIC. These services are available via the EIC Service Catalogue in the EIC Community Platform. A financial support is also offered to eligible EIC awardees to cover up to 50% of costs of partners’ services 193 ;

ª for EIC Accelerator applicants, EIC Awardees, EIC STEP Scaleup call, Women Tech EU, WIDERA Pre-accelerator Awardees, Women Leadership Programme participants and EIC Seal of Excellence and Sovereignty (STEP) Seal recipients coaching is available when a suitable alternative service cannot be provided by EIC Ecosystem Partners; 

ªSupport to attend European and international business trade fairs;

ªSupport to access and expand business in new global markets (soft-landing programme);

ªSupport to pilot and close deals with corporates (EIC Corporate Partnership Programme)

ªTraining and support for start-ups and SMEs in winning contracts from public and private sector innovation procurement tenders and funding to test products with innovation procurers (EIC Innovation Procurement Programme);

ªTech2Market BAS - Dedicated Business and Innovation Acceleration Services to EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition beneficiaries 194 supporting transition from lab to market. It will give access to venture building activities helping entrepreneurial researchers / proto-entrepreneurs to acquire critical skills and connect with partners and service providers supporting in business and venture development;

ªA platform and supporting one-to-one services for EIC Accelerator, Transition, EIC STEP Scaleup and Pre-Accelerator companies to find (co-)investors; 

ªThe EIC Women Leadership Programme to provide training sessions on leadership and entrepreneurial skills, business coaching and mentoring to women- (co)founded and/or led EIC companies (see Glossary), women researchers from EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition aspiring for leadership position in business, and Women TechEU Awardees; 

ªSupport in Environmental, Social and Governance related reporting and assessing and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, for instance through the provision of a carbon-footprint measurement tool and specific trainings on the subject.

All BAS services are listed on and accessed through the EIC Community Platform. 195  The EIC Community Platform is a virtual meeting place, where all EIC Awardees and other entities eligible to receive BAS services can connect with each other and with other innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, corporates and procurers. It provides matching and collaboration features.

BAS services are funded through multi-year procurement and expert contracts and grants, some of which were financed through previous Work Programmes. The following actions pertaining to BAS services will be funded in 2025:

VI.1 EIC business coaches (direct EIC services)

Business coaching focuses on providing insights on business development and guidance to improve business performance. Coaching topics cover the entire entrepreneurial and innovation endeavour from challenging the value proposition and business model, IP management, data protection, improving strategy and investor business case, building the team and leadership, to international expansion. EIC business coaching is provided to eligible entities:

ªAt full proposal application stage for EIC Accelerator, three days of remote coaching. 196

ªFor EIC Awardees, business coaching is accessible via an EIC Ecosystem Partner or directly from the EIC if no suitable alternative is available. Twelve days of remote coaching 197 are offered to EIC Awardees, Pre-accelerator Awardees. In exceptional cases (e.g., scaling up), this can be extended beyond the 12 days.

ªOther entities eligible to receive BAS services receive three days of remote coaching. Exceptionally, coaching can be offered to beneficiaries of other EIC or Horizon Europe actions.

In all cases the EIC will request to the coach and coached a structured coaching report/survey after the coaching has been provided, to ensure the services are of the highest quality.

The EIC coaching services are provided by highly qualified business coaches. The coaches register their profile and expertise in the Commission’s corporate database, further to a single Call for Expression of interest published for experts across all EU programmes, as well as on the EIC Coach Platform . The selection of the business coaches is made following a continuously open call-for expression of interest in accordance with Article 242 of the Financial Regulation 198 , and new coaches are selected when necessary.

Applicants to provide EIC coaching services must have: at least five years of professional experience as investor, board advisor or in managerial positions with responsibilities in developing business innovation; and at least five years of coaching experience supporting new business development within a corporate’s departments or with start-ups. The fields of new business development include technical expertise as well as practical involvement on go-to-market processes, building/acquisition of strategic partnerships and organizational and financial development.

EIC business coaches have the task to support the recipients of BAS depending on their needs, assess with them improvement opportunities and assist them in their process of learning and solving complex business development issues. As highly qualified specialized business coaches, their fees will be proportionate to their high-level strategic support, and it will closely mirror the international level of fees for experts performing tasks of similar nature. In this respect, EIC business coaches will receive EUR 1 000 per day of coaching (corresponding to EUR 500 per half day), which is considered to be proportionate to the specific services that EIC business coaches will provide, which are more complex than the standard tasks of experts evaluators.

Type of action: Expert contracts action.

Indicative budget: EUR 2 million

Indicative timetable: from Q1 2025

VI.2 EIC Community and Women Leadership Programme

The objective of this action is to provide content, maintain and improve the functionalities and services of the EIC Community and its online platform. The successful contractor will provide services such as:

·Coordination, moderation, curation of information and data of the online EIC Community on its dedicated platform; 

·Coordination of the overall BAS communication;

·Coordination among all the BAS Programmes; 

·Implementation of a customer relationship management tool;

·Maintenance and improvement of the entire EIC Community platform and of the Green House Gas emissions measurement tool for companies;

·Organisation of online and offline events for the EIC Community;

·Coordination and organisation the EIC Women Leadership Programme providing training, mentoring and networking opportunities for female entrepreneurs and researchers aiming for leadership positions in business.

Type of action: Public Procurement

Indicative budget: EUR 2 million

Indicative timetable: from Q2 2025

VI.3 Investors’ Outreach Activities

Together with the EIC Fund, this action will build on the existing co-investment programme with two folds objectives:

-Provide the specialised support to the EIC Awardees (including startups selected under the EIC pilot and beneficiaries of the STEP action) in fundraising for technology development, market deployment and scale-up.

-Support the EIC Fund in ramping up to being a key strategic actor within the investment landscape in supporting European breakthrough technologies by supporting the development of a community of investors for co-investing alongside the EIC Fund.

This action shall provide assistance to EIC Awardees that are startups and scaleups to increase their investment readiness, assist them to identify the right investors, reach out to the investors and actively support their matching with potential investors and finance partners through dedicated matching events, direct introductions, investor matching platform or other means.

EIC Fund has been recognised as one of the most active deep tech investors in Europe. 199 It is of utmost importance that the activities are increased to the benefit of both deep tech companies and investors in deep tech. This action shall support EIC Fund in ramping up the efforts in strengthening the network of capital providers and strategic partners suitable for (co-)investments and follow-on funding for the EIC beneficiaries through organising and participating to dedicated investor events either online or physical.

The Programme shall engage the most relevant data aggregators to ensure that the EIC Fund investments are – to the extent possible - accurately depicted in their databases and reports.

Type of action: Public Procurement

Indicative budget: 3.5 million

Indicative timeline: From Q1 2025

VI.4. Ecosystem Partnership Programme & promotion of ESG reporting

The objective of this action is to reinforce the EIC mission to be a pivotal and active connector in the European innovation ecosystem by bridging EIC Awardees with innovation actors across the globe enabling them to access their specialized, sector-focused services, resources, facilities, and expertise to address their individual needs.

The potential ecosystem partners apply through an open call, on a rolling basis and the Programme is open to all organisations globally. The selection of the partners is service-focused and their track record in providing relevant services to the EIC Awardees is key.

The proposed action would support the Agency in running the call for EIC Ecosystem Partners, diligent maintenance of the EIC Service Catalogue displaying partners’ services, by keeping the services’ offer relevant for the EIC beneficiaries and by implementing and supervising its further developments. It should cover creation and updating of all the guiding materials for all users (e.g. tutorial videos, briefs, FAQs,..) and promotion of the EIC Service Catalogue through newsletters, social media of relevant events of and for EIC Ecosystem Partners and EIC Awardees. The action also foresees the co-organisation of joint activities with EIC Ecosystem Partners including info sessions, stakeholders’ days, pitching and trainings sessions and EIC outreach activities. This activity should be implemented in close collaboration with the separate project providing EIC Awardees with financial support to access services from the EIC Service Catalogue.

Taking advantage of services included in the EIC Service Catalogue, the action will take on board the development of training sessions, tools and promotion to support Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting. More and more investors and financial institutions drive their investment strategies and risk management on ESG factors, having an increasingly important impact on the operation of capital markets and on investor confidence in sustainable products. This action intends to prepare and test with EIC Awardees best tools for their future development and for reaching the thresholds where environmental, social and governance disclosure become mandatory.

Type of action: Public Procurement

Indicative budget: EUR 1.5 million

Indicative timetable: from Q1 2025

VI.5 EIC Participation to trade fairs in 2026

This action will allow to select EIC Awardees that are SMEs to attend European and international business trade fairs. The aim is to support their commercialisation strategy in European and foreign markets, and to strengthen the EU innovation brand around the world. The provided services will include exhibition space within the ‘EIC Pavilion’ in relevant fairs, market training sessions for the participating companies, organisation of business meetings at the fair, company promotion, the organisation of side events and sessions at the fair.

Type of action: Public Procurement

Indicative budget: EUR 2.5 million

Indicative timetable: from Q2 2025

VI.6 Global Soft-landing programme

This action will support EIC Awardees which are SMEs and aim for global expansion venturing into new markets outside the European Union. The provided activities will include a customised programme of guidance and adequate tools (including coaching, training, pitching, communication...) for EIC Awardees who want to expand to a new market without keeping their attention away from their main operations at home.

Beyond identifying suitable opportunities and partners for business development and co-investment, this action will provide the selected EIC Awardees with a comprehensive array of tailored services and a deep understanding of the business ecosystem and landscape, culture and regulations of the most active deep-tech innovation hubs in the world. It will also contribute to strengthen the EU innovation brand globally.

Type of action: Public Procurement

Indicative budget: 2 EUR million

Indicative timetable: from Q1 2025

VII.EIC Prizes 

VII.1    The European Prize for Women Innovators 

Objectives and scope

Facing fast-paced developing technologies and science, it is crucial to involve women and girls in the design, development and up-take of innovative solutions. Achieving gender equality and diversity benefits not only individuals, but also increases the performance of business, research and innovation.

Nevertheless, women continue to face multiple barriers, in bringing new ideas to the market and raising capital for their companies. This negatively affects the success rate of women-founded businesses and perpetuates the lack of awareness about the systemic nature of gender inequality. Hence, women’s efforts and contributions to science and innovation should be encouraged and supported.

The European Commission put in place a Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025 200 , which sets out the Commission’s broader commitment to equality across all EU policies.

As outlined in the New European Innovation Agenda 201 , supporting women innovators strengthens the European research and innovation system and creates gender-equal working environments where all talents can thrive. By integrating a gender dimension in projects, research quality is improved as well as the production of the knowledge, technologies and innovations.

The European Prize for Women Innovators celebrates the women entrepreneurs behind Europe’s game-changing innovations, so that they may inspire other women and girls realise their full potential as the EU’s future scientists, innovators, and tech leaders.

This prize supports a culture within research and innovation organisations and companies allowing women to become the innovators and entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

The prize is awarded every year to women from across the EU and countries associated to Horizon Europe, who have transformed their ideas into disruptive innovations to benefit people and the planet and who are inspiring leaders.

As for the previous edition, the 2026 European Prize for Women Innovators is organised in coordination between the Agency and the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT). The winners are chosen by an independent expert jury.

There are two EIC prize categories funded under this Work Programme: Women Innovators and Rising Innovators. In the first category, three prizes of EUR 100 000, EUR 70 000 and EUR 50 000 are awarded to the three highest-ranked applications. In the second category, three prizes of EUR 50 000, EUR 30 000 and EUR 20 000 are awarded to the three highest-ranked applications from promising ‘Rising Innovators’ under the age of 35. (The EIT Women Leadership category will be funded and managed by the EIT in coordination with the above prizes.)

Eligibility criteria

All applicants must comply with the following eligibility criteria to participate:

1.The applicant 202 must be a woman (natural person); 203

2.The applicant must be legally residing 204 in an EU Member State, including overseas countries and territories (OCTs) or a country associated to Horizon Europe;

3.The applicant must be the founder or co-founder 205 of the company or organisation 206 ;

4.The company or organisation must be established in an EU Member State including overseas countries and territories, (OCTs) or a country associated to Horizon Europe, and registered or incorporated 207  at least two years before the call year 208 ;

5.Applicants who have already received an EU or Euratom prize cannot receive a second prize for the same activities.

In addition to the above, those applying for the Rising Innovators category must be aged under 35 at the start of the call year. 209 There is no age limit to apply for the Women Innovators category, though applicants eligible for several prize categories can only apply to one.

Applicants are expected to provide proof of eligibility upon request.

Applicants must support their written application with an inspiring video message about themselves and their achievements, lasting no more than 90 seconds.

The jury’s assessment will be based on Parts A and B of the application form, as well as the video submitted by the applicant.

Award criteria

The prize is awarded to the applicants who in the opinion of the jury best address the following criteria:

1.Breakthrough innovation – the company or organisation founded or co-founded by the applicant is developing a breakthrough innovation focusing, among others, on deep-tech and Science Technology Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) fields. In presenting their innovation, the applicant should demonstrate what makes this innovation breakthrough in relation to other existing solutions.

2.Impact – this innovation addresses a real need or challenge, with significant benefits for people and/or the planet. The applicant will demonstrate how the company’s or organisation’s current performance and growth is driving a positive socio-economic and/or environmental impact, among others, in terms of wellbeing, education, profit, or job creation.

3.Inspiration – the applicant is an inspiring leader, who has played a pivotal role in the success of the company or organisation and is a role model empowering other women and girls in realising their full potential. The applicant should, for example, highlight her efforts to promote gender balance within the company, organisation or beyond, and/or to advocate for innovative initiatives that have positively contributed to gender equality in, e.g., access to finance, networks, product design, education and contributes to a gender-responsive innovation.

The jury will review and score all eligible applications and invite the shortlisted applicants to a hearing in front of the jury members to defend their application. This hearing may take place remotely.

Further details on the evaluation and award criteria will be specified in the rules for this contest published at the launch of the contest. For the common ‘Rules of Contest for Prizes’ please see the Funding & Tenders Portal.

Expected results

The prize will boost public awareness of the potential, importance and contribution of women to the EU innovation ecosystem and create strong role models, inspiring more women to become innovators themselves.

Type of Action: Recognition Prize

Indicative Timetable:

Indicative Budget:

VII.2    The European Capital of Innovation Awards (iCapital)

Cities and/or towns are faced with most severe societal and sustainability challenges but do also have the means to develop, promote, and apply effective innovative solutions. They are the place where ideas, people, public and private actors meet and engage to improve the quality of life of citizens. They are the natural playground where breakthrough innovations flourish and nourish. They provide ground to experiment new technologies and products in a real environment, their interaction with people and their added value.

Objectives and Scope

The traditional city innovation ecosystem is opening to new models of innovation engaging citizens, ensuring their involvement in the decision-making process, and reinforcing democracy and rights. An increasing number of cities are acting as test beds for innovation and run people-driven initiatives to find solutions to societal challenges, such as climate change, digitalisation, sustainable growth or social cohesion, including through new endeavours such as nature-based solutions and EU Missions

The public domain is particularly challenged with finding effective ways to ensure the mainstreaming of these practices into the ordinary urban development process. Successful practices are particularly crucial to enhance the city’s capacity to attract and retain new resources, funds and talents to stimulate the growth of breakthrough innovations. Moreover, collaboration and strengthening synergies among innovation ecosystems boost cities’ development and resilience to tackle urban challenges and inspires many other cities follow a similar path.

The New European Innovation Agenda 210 sets out a vision for harnessing the power of innovation to drive economic growth, social progress, and contribute to the green and digital transition in Europe. The agenda emphasizes the need for strategic investments in key technologies, including deep tech, and for strengthening and better connecting innovation ecosystems through stronger collaboration between regions, to close the innovation divide.

For this reason, the European Capital of Innovation Awards will recognize the cities’ role as catalysers of the local innovation ecosystem and will stimulate new activities aimed at boosting game-changing innovation.

Categories

In this edition, the European Capital of Innovation Awards will feature two categories. The first one, the European Capital of Innovation category, would include cities which have a population of minimum 250 000 inhabitants and, based on the cumulative criteria set out below, would reward the winner (ranked 1st) with EUR 1 million and two runners-up (ranked 2nd and 3rd) with EUR 100 000 each one.

The second one, the European Rising Innovative City category, would include cities with a population of 50 000 and up to 249 999 inhabitants; and, based on the cumulative criteria set out below, would reward the winner (ranked 1st) with EUR 500 000 and the two runners-up (ranked 2nd and 3rd) with EUR 50 000 each one.

Each application must contain a specific endorsement to apply signed by the city Mayor (or the equivalent highest political representative).

Eligibility criteria

1.The candidate cities 211 must be located in one of the Member States or Associated Countries to Horizon Europe.

2.For the category of the European Capital of Innovation, the candidate city must have a minimum population of 250 000 inhabitants. In countries where there are no such cities, the city coming closest to 250 000 inhabitants is eligible to apply for the European Capital of Innovation category, provided that it has a minimum population of 50 000 inhabitants and that the city did not apply for the European Rising Innovative City category. The candidate cities for the European Rising Innovative City category must have a population of 50 000 and up to 249,999 inhabitants. In countries where there are no such cities, the largest city by number of inhabitants is eligible.

3.Winners of former European Capital of Innovation Awards editions, as well as runners-up of the edition 2024 are not eligible. This does not apply to previous finalist cities.

4.Applicants that have already received an EU or Euratom prize cannot receive a second prize for the same activities.

Award criteria

The award is launched and managed by the Agency. For this yearly competition, six prizes will be awarded after closure of the contest to the applicants who, in the opinion of the jury, best address the following cumulative criteria:

1.Experimenting – innovative concepts, processes, tools, and governance models proving the city’s commitment to act as a test-bed for innovative practices while ensuring the mainstreaming of these practices into the ordinary urban development process. The applicant is expected to provide details on concrete results of the showcased initiatives.

2.Escalating – promoting the acceleration of the different actors of the local innovation ecosystem, supporting growth of highly innovative start-ups and SMEs establishing innovation friendly legal framework, creating an environment that stimulates growth and attracts private and public investments, resources, diversity and talents; and driving innovation demand through efficient innovation public procurement.

The applicant is expected to provide details on concrete results of the showcased initiatives.

3.Ecosystem building – unlocking cities potential as local innovation ecosystem facilitators by fostering synergies among different innovation ecosystem players, from public, industry, start-ups, civil society, citizens to academia, to contribute to the development of an innovation ecosystem within the city.

The applicant is expected to provide details on concrete results of the showcased initiatives.

4.Expanding – acting as a role model for other cities by supporting the dissemination and replication of tested solutions that boost the local innovation ecosystem; by promoting mutual learning, knowledge transfer and capacity building; and by enhancing cooperation and synergies between cities that are front-runners in driving the local innovation ecosystem, and those that are still exploring and testing their role as innovation enablers.

The applicant is expected to provide details on concrete results of the showcased initiatives.

5.City innovative vision – applicants should demonstrate their long-term strategic vision/plan, highlighting the innovative initiatives that have positively contributed to the transformation of the city and which will further support the development of a sustainable and resilient innovation ecosystem ensuring the green and digital transition. 

The applicant is expected to provide details on concrete results of the showcased initiatives. Moreover, the applicant is invited to provide information on how all showcased activities follow the innovative vision/strategy.

6.Citizens' rights – the use of innovation to strengthen democracy, to protect citizens' rights, to foster social cohesion, and ensure integration with a special view on minorities, gender, disability, or race.

The applicant is expected to provide details on concrete results of the showcased initiatives.

The jury will review and score eligible applications and invite the shortlisted applicants to a hearing in front of the jury members to defend their application. This hearing may take place remotely.

Further details on the evaluation process and award criteria, as well as promotional activities will be specified in the rules for this contest published at the launch of the yearly contest.

Moreover, in this edition, the title “Capital of Innovation –iCapital- 2026” or “Rising Innovative city 2026” will be awarded in the respective category. Therefore, to celebrate the year the winning cities (ranked 1st in each category) will be invited to sign a declaration of intent 212 to commit on a series of actions to promote iCapital during the year.

For the common rules of contest for prizes, please see the Funding & Tenders Portal.

Expected results

The European Capital of Innovation Awards aim to champion inspiring cases of municipality-enabled innovation flourishing in cities. The Awards are a prestigious recognition for city administrators who are courageous enough to open up their governance practices to experimentation, to boost innovation by all means, to be a role model for other cities, and to push the boundaries of technology for the benefit of their citizens.

In addition to the monetary reward, the prize brings high visibility in the form of renewed public interest and increased media coverage.

A European prize to the most innovative cities ecosystems. The award will raise the profile of the cities that have developed and implemented innovative policies; established frameworks that boost breakthrough innovation; enhanced the city attractiveness towards investors, industry, enterprises and talents; helped to open up connections and strengthen links with other cities, promoting the replication of best practices in the innovation field; enhanced citizens’ involvement in the decision-making process; and supported cities resilience.

Type of Action: Recognition Prize

Indicative budget: the following 2025 budget will be allocated as follows:

Indicative timetable of contest(s)

VIII.Other Actions 

VIII.1    Honoraria and expenses of the EIC Board

As highly qualified, specialised, independent advisors appointed following an open and transparent procedure, the members of the EIC Board will be remunerated for the services they offer from the budget of the EIC work programme.

Remuneration is justified on the grounds of the personal commitment of the members and their work providing high level strategic advice to the Commission and bringing prestige and visibility to the EIC.

Remuneration will be proportionate to the specific tasks to be assigned to EIC Board members and it will closely mirror compensation schemes for other EU, international or national entities of similar nature. Remuneration will take the form of honoraria for their effective participation at the Board’s plenary meetings or any other additional meetings and events where EIC Board members are asked to attend. It will be accompanied by a compensation for travel (‘travel allowance’) and other expenses (‘per diem’) for in person meetings on location.

1.The rules on the compensation of the members of the EIC Board (other than its President) are the following: Honoraria of members of the EIC Board other than the President, as well as their travel and subsistence expenses (per diem), will be paid by the Agency. Honoraria will be paid irrespective of the length (i.e. number of days) of the meeting and will be governed by the provisions of the individual expert contract in accordance with points 2) to 7).

2.The honoraria of the members referred to in point 1 will be:

§EUR 2 200 for full attendance at a plenary meeting, and; 

§EUR 1 100 for partial attendance (up to 50% of the meeting time). 

3.Payments will be authorised by the Agency on the basis of an attendance list validated by the EIC Board President and the Director of the Agency or their deputies. The attendance list must indicate if each member attended the entire meeting (full attendance) or only part of it (partial attendance).

4.For other meetings than plenary meetings, and preparatory work for plenary meetings, the Agency will, based on the validated list by the EIC Board President ,, remunerate those days with an honoraria of EUR 1100 per day and reimburse travel and subsistence expenses necessary for members of the Board to carry out their activities in accordance with their contract and the Commission’s rules on the reimbursement of external experts. 213  

5.In the case of participation at plenary meetings through the use of remote communication, the time spent connected through the communication link must count as a physical presence at the meeting for the purpose of establishing the appropriate honoraria.

6.The honoraria and travel and subsistence expenses will be paid from the operational budget indicated in this Work Programme.

These amounts are adapted to high level expert’s terms as performed by other entities for similar high-level work. Additional work other than plenary meetings shall be reimbursed based on time spent and at the request of the Commission, of a daily amount of EUR 1100. In accordance with Article 49(2) of the Horizon Europe Regulation, the level of remuneration for EIC Board members is beyond the standard conditions, as the Board consists of high-level experts, their role goes beyond that of normal experts, and a daily reimbursement of an amount of EUR 1100 (EUR 2200 for plenary meetings where attendance and preparation correspond to two days) is in line with relevant market standards and proportionate to the specific tasks attributed to them 214 ..

Type of action: Expert contract action.

Indicative budget: EUR 500 000

Indicative Opening: From Q1 2025

VIII.2        External expertise for monitoring, ethics and policy advice

The EIC uses external independent experts for monitoring of projects 215 and ethics compliance, for other compliance checks (including on Gender Equality Plans), for technology assessments (including where necessary on risks to economic security), for policy advice on the optimal achievement of the EIC objectives, as well as for the implementation of scientific/technological/ innovation intelligence, proactive management of EIC activities (including support to BAS activities and to the EIC Programme Managers) and project reviews for increases in Accelerator support 216 .

The EIC could reimburse the costs of applicants invited to attend interviews during the evaluation of their proposals.

A special allowance of EUR 450/day will be paid to the experts appointed in their personal capacity who act independently and in the public interest 217 .

Type of action: Expert contracts.

Indicative budget: EUR 5.300.000

Indicative opening: From Q1 2025.

VIII.3 Communication, outreach, events

The success of the EIC lies in attracting highly innovative and diverse companies and researchers that can generate fast and high growth, as well as co-investors and global corporates that can further maximise the impact of EIC support.

The objective of this action is to prepare and implement the communication and outreach activities for the EIC, following advice from the EIC Board, with an objective to strengthen the reputation of the EIC among its stakeholders, potential applicants, policymakers, investors and the broader EU innovation ecosystem. The action will also include EIC global outreach activities, in particular to raise awareness of the EIC among international investors. This action covers the maintenance and management of the EIC website and its social media channels; the creation of relevant informative content and materials; the preparation and development of thematic communication campaigns; media relations and other outreach and stakeholders engagement activities including networking events with EIC jury members.

In addition, this action provides further support to the organisation of the EIC Summit 2026. Furthermore, this action support the organisation of the EIC Awards Ceremonies, the organisation of the iCapital alumni network awards ceremony, as well as various communication activities around the EIC Prizes .

This action will also support a prominent EIC presence at key European Commission and /or third party events, ensuring high visibility of the EIC and selected beneficiaries, leading to increased impact in the visibility and branding of the EIC among key audiences. This should allow the EIC to become a prominent voice in the ongoing debates relevant to innovation policy in Europe and globally. The communication and outreach campaign should generate awareness and impact at international, European, national, regional and local levels.

Type of action: Public procurement actions.

Indicative opening: From Q1 2025.

Indicative budget: EUR 3,200,000 

VIII.4    EIC Data management and IT systems integration 218

The purpose of this action is to provide to the EIC the technical means to achieve the EIC Programme objectives.

This action covers the entire development lifecycle of the relevant IT tools and methodology including the development of user stories, functional and technical analysis, IT architecture and development of new functionalities, evolutive maintenance of existing IT components, cloud infrastructure architecture and provisioning, automatic /user testing of new features, IT helpdesk and user support while ensuring adequate IT project and team management, ensure security and IT governance compliance.

The focus in 2025, building on the developments started in 2020 and continued throughout the years of the EIC until 2024, is to ensure the evolutive maintenance of existing IT tools in support of the EIC, with the needed technical and usability improvements the EIC IT system, and develop new functionalities and features in response to evolving business processes and user needs. The objective is to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the EIC operations complementing the EC Corporate IT Tools.

The focus will also be on harnessing the data and information coming from internal and third-party sources to enable data-driven / strategic decision-making and strategic intelligence for the proactive management of EIC activities and the efficient and effective delivery of services to EIC applicants, beneficiaries, and stakeholders.

Considering the above, the EIC IT developments will focus on the following key components:

ªFurther harmonise and consolidate data sources into a common data model and infrastructure for EIC. Develop needed webservices to exchange Business Acceleration Services (BAS) data with other EC IT systems and stakeholders including EIT, EIB, EIC Fund etc.

ªImprove and expand the IT tools and interfaces built to support the daily operations management of EIC staff and third parties (e.g., staff of EIC Fund, EIB and service providers for the due diligence process) involved in the negotiation, monitoring and other processes of EIC Accelerator projects and companies. EIC IT developments will complement Corporate IT tools and where applicable, IT developments foreseen by EIC Fund, EIB, EIT and relevant third parties.

ªUpdate, improve and maintain the EIC Community to help EIC funded projects and companies in finding partners, relevant support and services to their activities and projects, facilitate business development, networking activities and the establishment of communities of practice (c.f. chapter V. Business Acceleration Services.) Where applicable, these actions will complement IT developments foreseen through Business Acceleration Services. The objective is also to further integrate the EIC Community with other corporate tools including CORDIS, Horizon Results Platform, Innovation Radar, Newsroom (for newsletters)

ªUpdate and improve the EIC Coaching system to automate administrative operations, generate statistics automatically and better integrate with the other EIC and EC corporate tools, while serving new business needs and stakeholders (c.f. chapter V. Business Acceleration Services.)

ªFurther develop and expand the event management back-office and front-end / communication tools in support of the Business Acceleration Services (BAS) and EIC Communication team.

ªSupport capacity development and Learning on all EIC IT tools and methodologies for EIC stakeholders including evaluators, experts and beneficiaries on-line and through EU Academy training events.

ªImprove usability, integration and seamless user experience across all the above tools, while increasing modularity and configurability of the IT tools developed, to increase their re-usability withing the EC services.

ªEnsure maintenance and proper user support for all the tools made available.

The above developments will follow, as much as possible, the principles of open-source code and open data standards ensuring that both the tools and data generated can be reused by other institutions, Member States, Associated Countries and relevant third parties.

Type of action: Public procurement action

Indicative budget: EUR 2.900.000

Indicative opening: From Q1 2025.

VIII.5        Danish presidency conference

The objective of this direct action is to support the organization of a conference on deep tech innovation that also explores the role of the wider ecosystem in supporting such developments. The conference will be organised by the Technical University of Denmark/Danmarks Tekniske Universitet in Autumn 2025 during the Danish Presidency of the Council (July-December 2025).

Expected outcomes and impacts

ªIdentify best practice in helping innovation-driven deep tech start-ups, focusing on critical technologies such as advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and biotech, get to market.

ªDebate the role and interactions with key stakeholders such as end customers in industry esp. corporates, academia, investors and policy makers amongst other in creating the conditions for such companies to flourish and innovations to find their route to market.

ªExplore the factors that determine progress and associated success factors.

Type of Action: Coordination and support action (CSA) / Grant to a named beneficiary (as the implementation of this grant is linked to a Danish Presidency event in support of the EIC. It will be awarded to an identified beneficiary according to Article 24 (3) (b) HE Regulation in conjunction with Article 198 (e) of the Financial Regulation 219  .

Legal entities:

- Technical University of Denmark/Danmarks Tekniske Universitet

Indicative budget: EUR 300 000

Indicative Timeline: Q4 2024

VIII.6    Polish presidency conference

The objective of this direct action is to ensure the support for the organisation of a conference on best practices in building well connected deep tech innovation ecosystem and filling in the technology/business/investment readiness gap with the objective to support growth of innovation-driven deep tech start-ups. It will be organized by the The National Centre for Research and Development under the Ministry of Science and Higher Education during Polish Presidency of the Council (January-June 2025).

Expected outcomes and impacts

·Identify best practices in helping innovation-driven deep tech start-ups from innovation ecosystems with different levels of maturity, particularly focusing on approaches to building capabilities and addressing current barriers such as the lack of specialized (e.g., deep tech) support at national/ regional level, and less developed ecosystems (fewer investors, peer group, potential clients, etc.)

·Discuss the role and interactions with key stakeholders such as technology transfer offices, academia, investors, and policy makers amongst other in creating the framework conditions for such companies to flourish and bring their innovations to the market.

·Build knowledge on the role of the New European Innovation Agenda actions on the MS innovation ecosystems and the impact of the EIC Board report on widening recommendations to determine factors that create progress and associated success factors.

Type of Action: Coordination and support action (CSA) / Grant to a named beneficiary (as the implementation of this grant is linked to a Polish Presidency event in support of the EIC. It will be awarded to an identified beneficiary according to Article 24 (3) (b) HE Regulation in conjunction with Article 198 (e) of the Financial Regulation 220  .

Legal entities:

National Centre for Research and Development Indicative budget: EUR 300 000

Indicative Timeline: Q1 2025

VIII.7 Women TechEU initiative

The Women TechEU Initiative is designed to support early-stage women-led deep-tech startups, addressing gender gap in the tech industry and fostering more diverse startup ecosystem across Europe. The initiative aims to enhance the competitiveness of women-led companies addressing critical societal challenges. By empowering women entrepreneurs, Women TechEU supports early stage deep-tech companies, paving the way for the participation of women-led start-ups in future EIC calls.

The Women TechEU initiative supports European early-stage deep tech start-ups, registered and established in an EU Member State or Horizon Europe Associated Country for at least six months at the time of the submission, founded or co-founded by women, holding a top management position (chief executive officer (CEO), chief technology officer (CTO), chief scientific officer (CSO), or equivalent). All deep tech domains are eligible, with the emphasis being on overall gender balance and the position held by women in the start-up. This call supports early-stage women-led companies which have not received substantial financial support. The women-led startups must respect the above conditions to be eligible for financial support to third parties under this action.

Expected Outcome

The consortium selected under this call is expected to Implement the Women TechEU initiative, covering the following activities:

-Ensure the sound design, organisation and management of the Women TechEU, ensuring continuity of the initiative;

-Implementing calls for proposals and organizing the evaluation of proposals and award of support to successful applicants. The call should use, where appropriate, the same evaluation criteria as for the EIC Accelerator;

-Create linkages with the Business Acceleration Services (BAS) for the Women Leadership Programme and EIC Community Platform to selected applicants;

-Implement project reviews of awardees as a basis to access the Fast Track to the EIC Accelerator;

-Communicate and promote the scheme in order to secure quality applications;

-Organise landmark events, building a network of Women TechEU grantees, and help them to connect with the overall EIC community;

-Promote cooperation and networking activities among the community of women entrepreneurs in the deep tech field;

-Promote a diversity in geographical participation and technological areas to be covered by the scheme;

-Report on the implementation of the scheme (key data on applications, evaluation, start-ups funded, demographics of end-beneficiaries of the scheme, etc.) to European Commission services.

The consortium should consider a project duration of two (2) years, with a possibility to extend the grant for another year, subject to achieving the key milestones of the project.

The consortium should foresee at least two calls for proposals per calendar year. The consideration of multiple cut-off dates is encouraged. Beyond providing funding to women-led deep tech start-ups, proposals under this topic should include a sound promotion and communication strategy of the programme (especially in underrepresented Member States), clearly brand the scheme as an EIC initiative, including but not limited to, through information and dissemination events, press and outreach events, or roadshows.

The consortium will provide financial support to the third parties in form of grants. The consortium must allocate at least 75% of the total proposed budget to financial support to third parties.

The maximum amount to be granted to each third party is EUR 75 000 221 . The grants aim to finance supporting activities of the selected companies such as evaluating and refining products/services, design, user experience, upgrading the business model, updating the business plan and growth strategy, finding partners and investors, market validation, etc. This is why the grant is above the threshold of the EUR 60 000 set out in Article 207 of the Financial Regulation 222 .

Women TechEU third parties will be eligible for mentoring and coaching provided by the BAS, under the ‘Women Leadership Programme’, which includes dedicated networking and pitching events funded under a separate EIC budget.

Type of Action: Coordination and support action (CSA)

Call Opening: 01.04.2025

Indicative budget: EUR 15 million

Call Opening: 01.04.2025

Deadline for applications: 01.09.2025 at 17h00 Brussels local time

VIII.8        Expert Group on the EIC Plug in scheme

This action will support the EIC operation and the implementation of the Plug-in scheme for the EIC Accelerator (see Annex 4). This expert group will assess the programmes and related evaluation processes submitted by Members States and Associated Countries on a regular basis and will recommend certification of those programmes suitable for the Plug-In scheme. The expert group will also provide recommendations on improvements to the scheme based on the experiences of implementation. The expert group may be requested to provide country specific recommendations for those Member States and Associated Countries who have not proposed relevant programmes or where those programmes have not been certified. The terms of reference will be co-created and co-designed with the Member States under the Working Group of the EIC Forum.

A special allowance of EUR 450/day will be paid to the experts appointed in their personal capacity who act independently and in the public interest. This amount is considered to be proportionate to the specific tasks to be assigned to the experts, including the number of meetings to be attended and possible preparatory work.

Type of action: Expert contracts

Indicative budget: EUR 100 000 Indicative opening:

Call Opening: From Q1 2025

VIII.9    Marketplace

As anticipated in previous work programmes a new tool will be the development of an Marketplace that will collect and organise information on preliminary findings and results generated by EIC projects and proactively make this information, together with supporting services and expertise, available to potential partners, investors and entrepreneurs that could take the results further or incorporate in their innovations.

The Marketplace will be hosted by the Corporate Horizon Results Platform but will be dedicated to the EIC beneficiaries.

The current action will serve to finance the developments needed of the platform and its services.

Type of Action: Service Level Agreement

Indicative budget: EUR 1 million

VIII.10 Fees for the European Investment Bank for tasks related to the investment component of the EIC Accelerator

In line with Article 11(3) of Council Decision 2021/764/EU establishing the Specific Programme implementing Horizon Europe, the Commission has entrusted tasks related to the implementation and management of the investment component of the EIC Accelerator (which includes the EIC STEP Scaleup and reserve for follow on investments) to the European Investment Bank as the implementing partner for an indicative budget for investment amounts as shown in Annex 1.

The European Investment Bank will receive an annual fee for these tasks.

Type of Action: Contribution agreement

Indicative budget:  EUR 1 million

IX.Annexes

These Annexes set out the general conditions applicable to calls and topics for grants and other forms of funding under the EIC Work Programme 2025. They also describe the evaluation and award procedures and other criteria for Horizon Europe EIC funding.

If a call or topic deviates from the general conditions or includes additional conditions, this is explicitly stated for the call or topic in the main part of this EIC Work Programme.

Applicants are invited to read the call documentation on the topic page of the EU Funding & Tenders portal (‘Portal’) carefully, and particularly these Annexes, the Horizon Europe Programme Guide 223 , the EU Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual 224 and the EU Grants AGA — Annotated Grant Agreement 225 . These documents provide clarifications and answers to questions on preparing the application.

Annex 1    Estimated Indicative Budget 

Annex 2    General conditions

These general conditions set out the general conditions applicable to calls and topics for grants and other forms of funding under the EIC Work Programme 2025. They also describe the evaluation and award procedures and other criteria for Horizon Europe EIC funding.

If a call or topic deviates from the general conditions or includes additional conditions, this is explicitly stated for the call or topic in the main part of this EIC Work Programme.

Applicants are invited to read the call documentation on the topic page of the EU Funding & Tenders portal (‘Portal’) carefully, and particularly these Annexes, the Horizon Europe Programme Guide 231 , the EU Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual 232 and the EU Grants AGA — Annotated Grant Agreement 233 . These documents provide clarifications and answers to potential questions on preparing the application.

A. ADMISSIBILITY

Applications must be submitted before the call deadline.

The page limits and sections subject to limits will be clearly shown in the application templates and must be respected. If an application exceeds the limits, there will be an automatic warning and invitation to re-submit a version that conforms to these limits. Excess pages will be automatically made invisible and will not be taken into consideration by the evaluators.

For the EIC Accelerator, the applicant must not be in a situation of concurrent submission/implementation. Concurrent submission exists when an applicant submits more than one proposal for evaluation to any EIC Accelerator call before the evaluation feedback has been provided for the earlier submission. If a case of concurrent submission is identified, only the proposal submitted last (before the deadline) will be taken into consideration. Concurrent implementation occurs when the awardee of an ongoing EIC Accelerator/EIC Pilot/SME Instrument grant project submits another full proposal with a grant component before the first project reaches its end date. 234  

B. ELIGIBILITY

B.1 Entities eligible to participate

Any legal entity, 235 regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from non-associated third countries or international organisation (including international European research organisations) 236 is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation 237 have been met together with any other conditions laid down in the specific call or topic.

According to Article 2(16) of the HE Regulation 238 , ‘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 as referred to in point (c) of Article 197(2) of the Financial Regulation. 239

Beneficiaries and affiliated entities must register in the  Participant Register  before submitting their application, in order to get a participant identification code (PIC) and be validated by the Central Validation Service before signing the grant agreement. For the validation, they will be asked to upload the necessary documents showing their legal status and origin during the grant preparation stage. A validated PIC is not a prerequisite for submitting an application.

For more information, see Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment .

Specific cases:

Affiliated entities — Affiliated entities (i.e. entities with a legal or capital link to a beneficiary 240 which participate in the action with similar rights and obligations to the beneficiaries, but which do not sign the grant agreement and therefore do not become beneficiaries themselves) are allowed, if they are eligible for participation and funding.

Associated partners — Associated partners (i.e. entities which participate in the action without signing the grant agreement, and without the right to charge costs or claim contributions) are allowed, subject to any specific call/topic conditions.

Entities without legal personality — Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees to protect the EU’s financial interests equivalent to those offered by legal persons 241 .

EU bodies — Legal entities created under EU law including decentralised agencies may be part of the consortium, unless provided for otherwise in their basic act.

Joint Research Centre (‘JRC’)— Where provided for in the specific call/topic conditions, applicants may include in their proposals the possible contribution of the JRC but the JRC will not participate in the preparation and submission of the proposal. Applicants will indicate the contribution that the JRC could bring to the project based on the scope of the topic text. After the evaluation process, the JRC and the consortium selected for funding may come to an agreement on the specific terms of the participation of the JRC. If an agreement is found, the JRC may accede to the grant agreement as beneficiary requesting zero funding or participate as an associated partner and would accede to the consortium as a member.

Associations and interest groupings — Entities composed of members (e.g. European research infrastructure consortia (ERICs)) may participate as ‘sole beneficiaries’ or ‘beneficiaries without legal personality’ 242 . However, if the action is in practice implemented by the individual members, those members should also participate either as beneficiaries or as affiliated entities (otherwise their costs will NOT be eligible).

Restrictions:

Restrictions on participation in Innovation Actions, including the EIC Accelerator, for entities established in China — In accordance with the 2019 “EU-China - A Strategic outlook” communication, the 2021 “Global Approach to Research and Innovation” communication, and the joint conclusions of the 4th EU-China Innovation Cooperation Dialogue of 2019, an exercise to develop a Joint Roadmap for the future of EU-China cooperation in science, technology, and innovation (Roadmap) has been established between the EU and China. It has the objective to develop a level playing field for engagement between the EU and China in the areas of science, technology, and innovation (STI) that is respectful of fundamental research and innovation values and principles. This endeavor is to be achieved through an agreement on the framework conditions contained in the Roadmap and their monitoring and evaluation. As progress so far has mainly taken place on the framework conditions linked to research rather than on those related to innovation, and taking into account the nature and objectives in particular of Innovation Actions, cooperation with entities established in China needs to be calibrated accordingly.

Legal entities established in China are therefore not eligible to participate in Horizon Europe Innovation Actions, including the EIC Accelerator, in any capacity. This includes participation as beneficiaries, affiliated entities, associated partners, third parties giving in-kind contributions, subcontractors or recipients of financial support to third parties (if any). Exceptions may be granted on a case-by-case basis for justified reasons. The above eligibility criteria may be reviewed in the future in accordance with policy developments. This exclusion is justified given the substantive concerns regarding the use of intellectual property generated under this publicly funded programme, and the ongoing discussions between China and the EU on the Joint Roadmap for the future of EU-China cooperation in science, technology, and innovation. 

Restrictions for the protection of European communication networks — The protection of European communication networks has been identified as an important security interest of the Union and its Member States. 243 In line with the Commission Recommendation on the cybersecurity of 5G networks of 2019 244 and the subsequent report on EU coordinated risk assessment of the cybersecurity of 5G networks of 2019, 245 the EU Toolbox on 5G cybersecurity, 246 the second report on Member States’ progress in implementing the EU toolbox on 5G cybersecurity of 2023, 247 and the related Communication on the implementation of the 5G cybersecurity toolbox of 2023, 248 the Commission together with the Member States has worked to jointly identify and assess cyberthreats and security risks for 5G networks. 249 The toolbox also recommends adding country-specific information (e.g. threat assessment from national security services, etc.). This work is an essential component of the Security Union Strategy and supports the protection of electronic communications networks and other critical infrastructures.

Entities assessed as “high-risk suppliers”, are currently set out in the second report on Member States’ progress in implementing the EU toolbox on 5G cybersecurity of 2023 250 and the related Communication on the implementation of the 5G cybersecurity toolbox of 2023 251 .

The toolbox also underlines that further developing European capacities in the area of 5G and post-5G technologies by leveraging EU Research & Innovation Funding programmes is a strategic risk mitigating measure. This entails the need to avoid the participation of high-risk supplier entities in the development of other technologies linked to the evolution of European communication networks to prevent technology transfer and the persistence of dependencies in materials, semiconductor components (including processors), computing resources, software tools and virtualisation technologies, as well as related cybersecurity.

In order to protect the specific policy requirements of the Union and/or its Member States, it is therefore appropriate that the following additional eligibility criteria apply to proposals under Pathfinder Challenges identified as “subject to restrictions for the protection of European communication networks” as well as , Pathfinder Open and Transition calls that concern the evolution of European communication networks (5G, post-5G and other technologies linked to the evolution of European communication networks):

Entities that are assessed as high-risk suppliers of mobile network communication equipment (and any entities they own or control) are not eligible to participate as beneficiaries, affiliated entities and associated partners.

The assessment is based on the following criteria:

·likelihood of interference from a non-associated third country, for example due to:

-the characteristics of the entity’s ownership or governance (e.g. state-owned or controlled, government/party involvement); 

-the characteristics of the entity’s business and other conduct (e.g. a strong link to a third country government); 

-the characteristics of the respective third country (e.g. legislation or government practices likely to affect the implementation of the action, including an offensive cyber/intelligence policy, pressure regarding place of manufacturing or access to information).

·(cyber-)security practices, including throughout the entire supply chain;

·risks identified in relevant assessments of Member States and third countries as well as other EU institutions, bodies and agencies, if relevant.

Exceptions may be requested from the Agency and will be assessed case-by-case, taking into account the criteria provided for in the 5G cybersecurity toolbox, the security risks and availability of alternatives in the context of the action.

EU restrictive measures —Entities subject to EU restrictive measures   under Article 29 of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and Article 215 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU)  252 as well as Article 75 TFEU 253 are not eligible to participate in any capacity, including as beneficiaries, affiliated entities, associated partners, third parties giving in-kind contributions, subcontractors or recipients of financial support to third parties (if any).

Applicants to the EIC Accelerator undertake that their Ultimate Beneficial Owners are not listed and, moreover, do not do business with customers, or make funds or economic resources available to, or for the benefit of (directly or indirectly) any natural or legal person designated under EU sanctions (Obligation of Result).

Special rules also apply to entities covered by Commission Guidelines No 2013/C 205/05 254 .

Legal entities established in Russia, Belarus, or in non-government-controlled territories of Ukraine — Given the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the involvement of Belarus, there is currently no appropriate context allowing the implementation of the actions foreseen in this programme with legal entities established in Russia, Belarus, or in non-government-controlled territories of Ukraine. Therefore, even where such entities are not subject to EU restrictive measures, such legal entities are not eligible to participate in any capacity. This includes participation as beneficiaries, affiliated entities, associated partners, third parties giving in-kind contributions, subcontractors or recipients of financial support to third parties (if any). Exceptions may be granted on a case-by-case basis for justified reasons.

Measures for the protection of the Union budget against breaches of the principles of the rule of law in Hungary — Following the Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2022/2506 , as of 16 December 2022, no legal commitments can be entered into with Hungarian public interest trusts established under the Hungarian Act IX of 2021 or any entity they maintain. Affected entities may continue to apply to calls for proposals. However, as long as the Council measures are not lifted, such entities are not eligible to participate in any funded role (beneficiaries, affiliated entities, subcontractors, recipients of financial support to third parties, etc.). In case of multi-beneficiary grant calls, applicants will be invited to remove or replace that entity and/or to change its status into associated partner. Tasks and budget may be redistributed accordingly.

Restrictions on control in Accelerator actions – In line with Article 136 of the Financial Regulation 255 , where necessary and duly justified and in line with Article 136 of the Financial Regulation, participation as a recipient 256 in Accelerator actions may, as an additional eligibility condition, be limited to legal entities which are not directly or indirectly controlled by a non-eligible third country or by a legal entity established in a non-eligible third country. Unless otherwise stated, such non-eligible countries are all countries other than EU Member States and Associated Countries. 

B.2. Entities eligible for funding

To become a beneficiary, legal entities must be eligible for funding.

To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:

ªMember 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.

ªthe Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States 257

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).

ªcountries associated to Horizon Europe – Pillar III 258 :

Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo 259 , Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom 260 . If the association agreement provides for an exclusion from the EIC Accelerator investment component, legal entities from that country are only eligible to apply for the ‘grant-only’ component of the EIC Accelerator.

Considering the Union’s interest to retain, in principle, relations with the countries associated to Horizon 2020, most third countries associated to Horizon 2020 are expected to be associated to Horizon Europe in due course of time. In addition, other third countries may also become associated to Horizon Europe during the programme. For the purposes of the eligibility conditions, applicants established in Horizon 2020 Associated Countries or in other third countries negotiating association to Horizon Europe will be treated as entities established in an Associated Country, provided that the Horizon Europe association agreement with the third country concerned applies at the time of signature of the grant agreement.

ªthe following low- and middle-income countries: 261 .

Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Comoros, Congo (Democratic Republic), Congo (Republic), Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Cuba, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt (Arab Republic), El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran (Islamic Republic), Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Korea (Democratic People's Republic), Kyrgyz Republic, Lao (People’s Democratic Republic), Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Micronesia (Federated States), Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Pakistan, Palau, Palestine 262 , Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, Samoa, São Tomé and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Sudan, Suriname, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic), Vietnam, Yemen Republic, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Legal entities which are established in countries not listed above will be eligible for funding if provided for in the specific call/topic conditions, or if their participation is considered essential for implementing the action by the Agency.

Specific cases: 

Affiliated entities — Affiliated entities are eligible for funding if they are established in one of the countries listed above, or in a country identified in the specific call/topic conditions.

Associated partners — Entities not eligible for funding (and therefore not able to participate as beneficiaries) may participate as associated partners, unless specified otherwise in the specific call/topic conditions.

Coordination and Support Actions – To be eligible to participate as beneficiaries (or affiliated entities) in ‘Coordination and support’ actions, legal entities must be established in a Member State or Associated Country, unless the specific call/topic conditions provide otherwise (in which case the general rules for eligibility for funding apply). Legal entities established in a non-associated third country may, however, participate in ‘Coordination and support’ actions as associated partners, unless this is explicitly excluded by the specific call/topic conditions.

EU bodies — Legal entities created under EU law may also be eligible to receive funding, unless their basic act states otherwise.

International organisations — International European research organisations are eligible to receive funding. International organisations with headquarters in a Member State or Associated Country are eligible to receive funding for ‘Training and mobility’ actions or when provided for in the specific call/topic conditions. Other international organisations are not eligible to receive funding, unless provided for in the specific call/topic conditions, or if their participation is considered essential for implementing the action by the Agency.

B.3 Single legal entity (‘Mono-beneficiary’) and consortium (‘multi-beneficiary’) composition

Unless otherwise provided for in the specific call/topic conditions:

ªApplicants for mono-beneficiary actions must be established in a Member State or Associated Country.

ªProposals for multi-beneficiary actions: proposals must be submitted by a consortium including as beneficiaries, at least three legal entities, independent from each other and each established in a different country as follows:

-at least one independent legal entity established in a Member State; and

-at least two other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries.

As affiliated entities do not sign the grant agreement, they do not count towards the minimum eligibility criteria for consortium composition (if any).

The JRC, international European research organisations and legal entities created under EU law are deemed to be established in a Member State other than those in which the other legal entities participating in the action are established.

Applications for Coordination and Support actions may be submitted by one or more legal entities, which must be established in a Member State, Associated Country, or in exceptional cases and if provided for in the specific call/topic conditions, in another third country. 263

B.4. Eligible activities

Eligible activities are the ones described in the call conditions. Applications will only be considered eligible if their content corresponds, wholly or in part, to the topic description for which it is submitted.

Projects must focus on civil applications and must not:

ªaim at human cloning for reproductive purposes; 

ªintend to modify the genetic heritage of human beings which could make such changes heritable (with the exception of research relating to cancer treatment of the gonads, which may be financed); 

ªintend to create human embryos solely for the purpose of research or for the purpose of stem cell procurement, including by means of somatic cell nuclear transfer; 

Projects must, moreover, comply with EU policy interests and priorities (environment, social, security, industrial policy, etc.).

B.5 Do Not Significant Harm (DNSH) principle

Innovations that significantly harm the environment (and therefore contravene the ‘do not significant harm’ principle of the EU Taxonomy Regulation), 264 social welfare or that are primarily designed for military applications, or in other fields which are generally excluded from EU funding pursuant to Article 18 Horizon Europe Regulation, will not be funded.

In general, EIC funding will not be awarded to projects that contravene the objectives of the Green Deal, including for example proposals dedicated to enhancing the use of fossil fuels and related technologies. Exceptions might be established, however, for activities aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from certain fossil fuel-based energy sources, such as those covered by the Complementary Climate Delegated Act 265 under the Taxonomy Regulation. For example, this delegated act recognises that, under strict conditions, specific fossil gas-related activities that can help accelerate the transition from high-emitting energy sources, such as coal, to renewable or low-carbon gases are in line with the EU’s climate and environmental objectives. 266

B.6 Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence

All AI-based systems or techniques need to be developed in a safe, secure and responsible manner, with a clear identification of and preventative approach to risks and in accordance with the AI Act. Depending on the type of research being proposed (from basic to precompetitive) and as appropriate, AI-based systems or techniques should be, or be developed to become (implicitly or explicitly contributing to the following objectives):

ªtechnically robust, accurate and reproducible, and able to deal with and inform about possible failures, inaccuracies and errors, proportionate to the assessed risk posed by the AI-based system or technique;

ªsocially robust, in that they duly consider the context and environment in which they operate; 

ªreliable and function as intended, minimising unintentional and unexpected harm, preventing unacceptable harm and safeguarding the physical and mental integrity of humans; able to provide a suitable explanation of its decision-making process, whenever an AI-based system can have a significant impact on people’s lives. 

All proposals involving the development, use and/or deployment of AI based system/technique must ensure that the proposed AI system/technique is technical robust (e.g., resilient to attack, safe and secure, having fallback plan, accurate, reliable and reproducible), safe and must describe how they will uphold the principles of human agency and oversight, fairness, gender neutral, diversity, non-discrimination, societal and environmental well-being, transparency and accountability.

B.7 Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs)

Where the specific call/topic conditions require a Technology Readiness Level (TRL), the definitions set out in the Glossary apply, unless otherwise specified.

B.8 Ethics

Projects must comply with ethical principles (including the highest standards of research integrity) and applicable EU, international and national law.

Applicants must have completed the ethics self-assessment as part of their application.

For more information, see  How to complete your ethics self-assessment .

Projects involving ethics issues will have to undergo an ethics review to authorise funding and may be made subject to specific ethics requirements. These requirements become part of the grant agreement as ethics deliverables, e.g. ethics committee opinions/authorisations required under national or EU law.

B.9 Security — EU classified and sensitive information

Projects involving classified and/or security sensitive information will have to go through the security appraisal process to authorise funding and may be made subject to specific security rules (detailed in a Security Section, which is annexed to the grant agreement). Specific provisions for EU-classified information (EUCI) and sensitive information (SEN) will be included in the grant agreement, as necessary and appropriate.

The rules for protecting EU-classified information (governed by Commission Decision (EU, Euratom) 2015/444 267  and/or national rules) provide for instance that:

ªprojects involving information classified TRES SECRET UE/EU TOP SECRET (or equivalent) can NOT be funded;

ªEU-classified information must be marked in accordance with the applicable security instructions in the Security Classification Guide appendix of the Security Aspects Letter (SAL) which is contained in the Security Section of the grant agreement;

ªgeneration of, or access to, information with classification levels CONFIDENTIEL UE/EU CONFIDENTIAL or above (and RESTREINT UE/EU RESTRICTED, if required by national rules) may take place only on the premises of entities which have been granted a facility security clearance (FSC) issue by the competent national security authority NSA);

ªhandling of information classified CONFIDENTIEL UE/EU CONFIDENTIAL or above (and RESTREINT UE/EU RESTRICTED, if required by national rules) may take place only in a secured area accredited by the competent NSA;

ªaccess to and handling of information classified CONFIDENTIEL UE/EU CONFIDENTIAL or above may be granted only to individuals with a valid personnel security clearance (PSC) and an established need-to-know, who have been briefed on the applicable security rules;

ªaccess to, and handling of, information classified RESTREINT UE/EU RESTRICTED may be granted only to individuals who have a need-to-know and have been briefed on the applicable security rules;

ªat the end of the grant, the classified information must either be returned or continue to be protected according to the applicable rules;

ªsubcontracting of tasks involving EU-classified information is subject to prior written approval by the European Commission, which is the originator of EU-classified information. It is only possible to subcontract these tasks to entities established in an EU Member State or in a non-EU country with a security of information agreement with the EU (or an administrative arrangement with the Commission);

ªdisclosure of EU-classified information is subject to prior written approval by the European Commission.

Depending on the type of activity, FSCs may have to be provided before the grant is signed. The Agency will assess this for each case and fix the delivery date during the grant preparation stage. It is not possible to sign any grant agreement before at least one of the beneficiaries in the consortium has an FSC.

In certain cases, the project results might not require classification, but they might be sensitive and require restricted disclosure or limited dissemination for security reasons, according to the applicable security instructions in the Security Section. This means that, in principle, third parties should have no access to results subject to this type of restriction. Disclosure of this information is subject to prior written approval by the European Commission.

Further security recommendations may be added to the grant and contract agreement in the form of security deliverables (e.g. establishing a security advisory board, appointing a project security officer, limiting the level of detail, using a fake scenario, etc.).

In addition, EIC Awardees must ensure that their projects are not subject to national/third country security requirements that could affect implementation or put into question the award of the grants (e.g. technology restrictions, national security classification, etc.). Any potential security issues must be notified immediately to the Agency.

B.10 Gender Equality Plans and gender mainstreaming

Relevant EIC Awardees must take all measures to promote equal opportunities between men and women in implementing the action and, where applicable, in line with their gender equality plan. They must aim to achieve, to the extent possible, a gender balance at all levels of personnel assigned to the action, including at supervisory and managerial level.

In addition, to be eligible, legal entities from Member States and Associated Countries that are public bodies, research organisations or higher education establishments (including private research organisations and higher education establishments) must have a gender equality plan, covering the following minimum process-related requirements:

ªPublication: a formal document published on the institution’s website and signed by the top management;

ªDedicated resources: commitment of resources and in gender equality to implement the plan;

ªData collection and monitoring: sex/gender disaggregated data on personnel (and students, for the establishments concerned) and annual reporting based on indicators;

ªTraining: Awareness raising/trainings on gender equality and unconscious gender biases for staff and decision-makers.

Content-wise, it is recommended that the gender equality plan addresses the following areas, using concrete measures and targets:

§work-life balance and organisational culture;

§gender balance in leadership and decision-making;

§gender equality in recruitment and career progression;

§integration of the gender dimension into research and teaching content;

§measures against gender-based violence including sexual harassment.

A self-declaration will be requested at proposal stage. If all the above-mentioned mandatory requirements are met through another strategic document, such as a development plan or an inclusion or diversity strategy, it can be considered as an equivalent. This eligibility criterion does not apply to other categories of legal entities, such as private for-profit organisations, including SMEs, non-governmental or civil society organisations.

B.11 Financial support to third parties

Where the specific call/topic conditions allow for financial support to third parties, the applicants must clearly describe in their proposal the objectives and the expected results, including the elements listed in the application template. The following conditions must also be fulfilled:

ªprojects must publish their open calls widely and adhere to EU standards of transparency, equal treatment, conflict of interest and confidentiality;

ªall calls for third parties and all calls that are implemented by third parties must be published on the Funding & Tenders Portal, and on the beneficiaries’ websites;

ªthe calls must remain open for at least 2 months;

ªif submission deadlines are changed, this must immediately be announced and registered applicants must be informed of the change;

ªprojects must publish the outcome of the calls without delay, including a description of third-party projects, the date of the award, the duration, and the legal name of the third party and country of establishment;

ªthe calls must have a clear European dimension.

Further conditions may be stipulated in the specific conditions for the topic.

For more information, see AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement, Articles 6.2.D.1 and 9.4.

C. FINANCIAL and OPERATIONAL CAPACITY

C.1 Financial capacity

Applicants must have stable and sufficient resources to successfully implement the projects and contribute their share. Organisations participating in several projects must have sufficient capacity to implement all these projects.

The financial capacity check will be done on the basis of the documents that the applicants will be requested to upload in the Participant Register during the grant preparation stage (e.g. profit and loss account and balance sheet, business plan, audit report produced by an approved external auditor, certifying the accounts for the last closed financial year, etc.). The analysis will be based on neutral financial indicators, but will also take into account other aspects, such as dependency on EU funding and deficit and revenue in previous years.

The check will normally be done for the coordinator and if the requested grant amount is equal or greater than EUR 500 000, except for:

ªpublic bodies (entities established as public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations, and

ªcases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (low-value grant).

If needed, it may also be done for the other applicants, including affiliated entities. If the financial capacity is structurally guaranteed by another legal entity, the financial capacity of that legal entity will be verified.

If the Agency considers that the financial capacity is not satisfactory, they may require:

-further information;

-an enhanced financial responsibility regime, i.e. joint and several responsibility of affiliated entities (see Section G below); and

-prefinancing paid in instalments;

or

-propose no prefinancing;

-request that the applicant concerned is replaced or, if needed, reject the entire proposal.

For more information, see Rules on Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment .

C.2 Operational capacity

Applicants must have the know-how, qualifications and resources to successfully implement their tasks in the project and contribute their share (including, when appropriate, sufficient experience in EU/trans-national projects of comparable size).

This assessment of operational capacity will be carried out during the evaluation of the award criterion ‘quality and efficiency of the implementation’. It will be based on the competence and experience of the applicants and their project teams, including its operational resources (human, technical and other) or, exceptionally, the measures proposed to obtain the necessary competence and experience by the time of the tasks are implemented.

If the evaluation of this award criterion leads a score above the applicable threshold, then the applicants are considered to have sufficient operational capacity.

For this assessment, applicants will be required to provide the following information in the application form:

-description of the (consortium) participant(s); and

-for each participant:

–identity of researchers involved in the proposal (through the researchers table);

–up to five most relevant publications, widely-used datasets, software, goods, services, or any other achievements relevant to the call content;

–up to five most relevant previous projects or activities, connected to the subject of this proposal; and

–description of any significant infrastructure and/or any major items of technical equipment, relevant to the proposed work.

Additional supporting documents may be requested if they are needed to confirm the operational capacity of any applicant.

Public bodies, Member State organisations and international organisations are exempted from the operational capacity check.

For the EIC Accelerator, the operational capacity of the applicant will be assessed during the evaluation of the award criterion ‘Level of risk, implementation, and need for Union support’. Experts will assess whether each participant has, or will have in due time thanks to EIC support, sufficient operational capacity to successfully carry out their tasks in the proposed work-plan. This assessment will be based on the competence and experience of the applicant, including their operational resources (human, technical, other) and the measures proposed to secure these resources by the time of the implementation of the tasks.

C.3 Exclusion

Applicants that are subject to EU administrative sanctions (i.e. exclusion) 268 or are in one of the following exclusion situations 269  that bar them from receiving EU grants can NOT participate:

ªbankruptcy, winding up, affairs administered by the courts, arrangement with creditors, suspended business activities or other similar procedures (including procedures for persons with unlimited liability for the applicant’s debts);

ªthey are in breach of social security or tax obligations (including if done by persons with unlimited liability for the applicant’s debts);

ªthey are guilty of grave professional misconduct (including if done by persons having powers of representation, decision-making or control, beneficial owners or persons who are essential for the award/implementation of the grant);

ªthey are guilty of fraud, corruption, having links to a criminal organisation, money laundering, terrorism-related crimes (including terrorism financing), child labour or human trafficking (including if done by persons having powers of representation, decision-making or control, beneficial owners or persons who are essential for the award/implementation of the grant);

ªthey have shown significant deficiencies in complying with main obligations under an EU procurement contract, grant agreement or grant decision (including if done by persons having powers of representation, decision making or control, beneficial owners or persons who are essential for the award/implementation of the grant);

ªthey are guilty of irregularities within the meaning of Article 1(2) of Regulation No 2988/95 270 (including if done by persons having powers of representation, decision making or control, beneficial owners or persons who are essential for the award/implementation of the grant); or

ªthey have created under a different jurisdiction an entity with the intent to circumvent fiscal, social or other legal obligations in the country of origin or created another entity with this purpose (including if done by persons having powers of representation, decision making or control, beneficial owners or persons who are essential for the award/implementation of the grant).

Applicants will also be refused if they: 271

ªhave misrepresented the information required as a condition for participating in the procedure or have failed to supply that information; or

ªwere previously involved in the preparation of documents used in the award procedure where this entails a breach of the principle of equality of treatment, including distortion of competition, that cannot be remedied otherwise.

D. AWARD CRITERIA

D.1 Award criteria

If admissible and eligible, the proposals for Coordination and Support Actions will be evaluated and ranked against the following award criteria:

D.2 Scores and weighting

Evaluation scores will be awarded for the criteria, and not for the different aspects listed.

For Coordination and Support Actions full applications, each criterion will be scored out of 5. The threshold for individual criteria will be 3. The overall threshold, applying to the sum of the three individual scores, will be 10.

All scores will be given a weight of 1.

Proposals that pass the individual threshold AND the overall threshold will be considered for funding, within the limits of the available call budget. Other proposals will be rejected.

D.3 Two-stage calls

Where applicable, this is detailed in the main part of this Work Programme, under the relevant sections.

E. DOCUMENTS

Submission

All proposals must be submitted electronically via the Funders & Tenders Portal electronic submission system (accessible via the topic page in the Search Funding & Tenders  section). Paper submissions are NOT possible.

Proposals must be complete and contain all parts and mandatory annexes and supporting documents.

The application form will have two parts:

–Part A (to be filled in directly online) contains administrative information about the applicant organisations (future coordinator and beneficiaries and affiliated entities), the summarised budget for the proposal and call-specific questions;

–Part B (to be downloaded from the Portal submission system, completed and then assembled and re-uploaded as a PDF in the system) contains the technical description of the project.

Annexes and supporting documents will be directly available in the submission system and must be uploaded as PDF files (or other formats allowed by the system).

Proposals should be designed to stay as close as possible to the award criteria (see Section D above). The application form will help to achieve this.

When submitting the proposal, the coordinator will have to confirm that they have the mandate to act for all applicants. Moreover, they will have to confirm that the information in the application is correct and complete and that all participants comply with the conditions for receiving EU funding (especially eligibility, financial and operational capacity, exclusion, etc.). Proposals not complying with these requirements will be rejected. Before signing the grant, each participant will have to confirm this again by signing a declaration of honour.

For lump sum grants proposals, the estimated budget must be described in a detailed budget table. This will be used as a basis for justifying and/or fixing the lump sum amount. As the lump sum must be an approximation of the costs actually incurred, the costs included in this detailed budget table must comply with the basic eligibility conditions for EU actual cost grants (see AGA — Annotated Grant Agreement, Article 6). This is particularly important for purchases and subcontracting, which must ensure best value for money (or, if appropriate, the lowest price) and be free from any conflicts of interest. If the budget table contains ineligible costs, the grants may be reduced (even later on during implementation of the project or after they end). Exceptionally, the Decision authorising the use of lump sum funding for a specific action might specify that a detailed budget table is not required.

Applicants may be asked at a later stage for further documents (for legal entity validation, financial capacity check, bank account validation, etc.).

F. PROCEDURE

F.1 Evaluation procedure and ranking

Proposals will be checked for formal requirements (admissibility and eligibility) and then evaluated (for each topic separately) by an evaluation committee composed of independent external experts for operational capacity and award criteria (see Annexes C and D above) and then ranked according to their quality score.

For lump sum grants proposals, comments on the detailed lump sum budget table will be provided in the Evaluation Summary Report only for proposals invited to grant agreement preparation (or placed in the reserve list) and ones rejected (in part) due to significant overestimation or underestimation of costs.

Exceptionally, where indicated in the specific call/topic conditions, the evaluation committee may be composed partially or, in the case of ‘Coordination and support actions’, partially or fully of representatives of EU institutions.

For proposals with the same score within a single budget envelope a method to establish the priority order will be determined, taking into consideration the objectives of the specific topic. In the absence of special arrangements in the specific call/topic conditions, the following method will apply:

For each group of proposals with the same score, starting with the group achieving the highest score and continuing in descending order:

1)Proposals that address aspects of the call that have not otherwise been covered by more highly ranked proposals will be considered to have the highest priority.

2)The proposals identified under 1), if any, will themselves be prioritised according to the scores they have been awarded for ‘Excellence’. When these scores are equal, priority will be based on scores for ‘Impact’. In the case of ‘Innovation actions’, priority will be given to the score for ‘Impact’, followed by that for ‘Excellence’.

3)If necessary, the gender balance among the researchers named in the researchers table in the proposal, will be used as a factor for prioritisation.

4)If necessary, any further prioritisation will be based on geographical diversity, defined as the number of Member States or Associated Countries represented in the proposal, not otherwise receiving funds from projects higher up the ranking list (and if equal in number, then by budget).

5)If a distinction still cannot be made, the panel may decide to further prioritise by considering other factors related to the objectives of the call, or to Horizon Europe in general. These may include, for example, enhancing the quality of the project portfolio through synergies between projects or, where relevant and feasible, involving SMEs. These factors will be documented in the panel report.

6)The method described in 1), 2), 3) and 4) will then be applied to the remaining equally ranked proposals in the group.

At the end of the evaluation, all applicants will be informed of the result in an evaluation result letter. Successful proposals will be invited to the next stage, ‘grant preparation’; the other proposals will be put on the reserve list or rejected.

No commitment to provide funding — Invitation to the grant preparation stage does NOT constitute a formal commitment to funding. Various legal checks are still needed before the grant can be awarded, such as legal entity validation, financial capacity verification, exclusion check, etc.

 Proposals may also receive a Seal of Excellence 272  and/or a Sovereignty (STEP) Seal  273 as explained in the main part of this Work Programme. With prior authorisation from the applicant, the Agency may share information concerning the proposal and the evaluation with interested financing authorities, subject to the conclusion of confidentiality agreements. In the case of the Sovereignty (STEP) Seal, information about the project will be, upon consent, display in the STEP Portal with the aim of enhancing the visibility of the project and attract potential investors.

Budget flexibility — The budgets set out in the calls and topics are indicative. Unless otherwise stated, final budgets may change following evaluation. The final figures may change by up to 20% compared to the total budget indicated in each individual part of the work programme. Changes within these limits will not be considered substantial within the meaning of Article 110(5) of EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 .

F.2 Evaluation review procedure

If the consortium believes that the evaluation procedure was flawed, the coordinator can submit a complaint (following the deadlines and procedures set out in the evaluation result letter).

Only the procedural aspects of an evaluation may be the subject of a request for an evaluation review. The evaluation of the merits of a proposal will not be the subject of an evaluation review. 

A request for an evaluation review must relate to a specific proposal and must be submitted within 30 days after the beneficiary accesses the evaluation results. The deadlines will be counted from the date of opening/access. The maximum size limit of the request is 7 000 characters. Notifications of evaluation results which have not been opened in the Funding & Tenders Portal within 10 days after sending are considered to have been accessed and that deadlines will be counted from the date of opening/access (see also  Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions ).

An evaluation review committee will provide an opinion on the procedural aspects of the evaluation. The evaluation review committee may recommend a re-evaluation of the proposal, to be carried out primarily by evaluators who were not involved in the previous evaluation, or a confirmation of the initial evaluation.

F.3 Indicative timetable for evaluation and for signature of the grant agreement

Unless otherwise stated in the specific call/topic conditions, the timing for evaluation and grant preparation is as follows:

–information on the outcome of the evaluation: around 5 months from the deadline for submission; 

–indicative date for the signing of grant agreements: around 8 months from the deadline for submission.

G. LEGAL AND FINANCIAL SET-UP OF THE GRANT AGREEMENTS

During the grant preparation stage, the applicant will be asked to prepare the grant agreement , together with the Agency project officer.

This grant agreement will set out the framework for the grant and its terms and conditions, particularly concerning deliverables, reporting and payments. The applicable model with the complete text of the provisions is available on the topic page, together with the other call documentation.

G.1 Starting date & project duration

The project starting date and duration will be fixed in the grant agreement (see Data Sheet, point 1). Normally, the starting date will be after the grant has been signed. A starting date before the date the grant is signed (retroactive) can be granted exceptionally for duly justified reasons, if agreed with the Agency 274 .

The project duration is provided in months (extensions will be possible only exceptionally, for duly justified reasons and if the Agency agrees).

G.2 Milestones and deliverables

The milestones and deliverables for each project will be managed through the grant management system in the Portal and are reflected in Annex 1 of the grant agreement.

The standard deliverables will be set out in the specific call/topic conditions.

G.3 Form of grant, funding rate and maximum grant amount

The grant parameters (maximum grant amount, funding rate, total eligible costs, etc.) will be fixed in the grant agreement (Data Sheet, point 3 and Article 5).

The project budget is provided in EUR. The amount of the grant awarded may be lower than the amount requested.

For actual cost grants, the grant will be a budget-based, mixed actual cost grant. This means that it will reimburse ONLY certain types of costs (eligible costs) and ONLY those costs actually incurred for the project (NOT the budgeted costs).

The costs will be reimbursed at the funding rate fixed in the specific call/topic conditions and in the grant agreement.

Such grants may NOT produce a profit. If there is a profit (i.e. surplus of revenues + EU grant over costs), it will be deducted from the final grant amount.

Moreover, the final grant amount may be reduced in case of non-compliance (e.g. improper implementation, breach of obligations, etc.).

The relevant maximum Horizon Europe funding rates are as follows:

–Research and innovation action: 100%

–Innovation action: 70% (except for non-profit legal entities, where a rate of up to 100% applies)

–Coordination and support action: 100%

–Innovation and market deployment: 70% (except for non-profit legal entities, where a rate of up to 100% applies)

Other funding rates may be set out in the specific call/topic conditions.

For lump sum and unit grants, the funding rate is already applied as part of the methodology for fixing the amounts and is therefore not shown in the grant agreement.

G.4 Budget categories and cost eligibility rules

The budget categories and cost eligibility rules are fixed in the grant agreement (see Data Sheet, point 3 and Article 6).

Budget categories:

–actual costs (i.e. costs which are real and not estimated or budgeted) for:

–personnel costs (unless declared as a unit cost; see below);

–subcontracting costs;

–purchase costs (unless declared as a unit cost; see below); and

–costs of providing financial support to third parties (if provided for in the specific call conditions);

–units (i.e. an amount per unit) for:

–personnel costs of SME owners/natural persons not receiving a salary;

–personnel costs calculated by the beneficiaries according to their usual cost accounting practices (average personnel costs);

–costs of internally invoiced goods and services calculated by the beneficiaries according to their usual cost accounting practices; and

–specific unit costs (if provided for in the specific call/topic conditions; see also Annex 2a of the grant agreement);

–flat-rate (i.e. costs calculated by applying a percentage fixed in advance to other types of eligible costs) for:

–indirect costs (25% flat-rate of the total eligible direct costs, excluding eligible direct costs for subcontracting, financial support to third parties and any unit costs or lump sums which include indirect costs);

–lump sum (i.e. a global amount deemed to cover all costs of the action or a specific category of costs, if provided for in the specific call/topic conditions).

Within a grant, different forms of costs can be used.

Costs can also be declared under several EU Synergy grants, if the cumulative funding under the grants does not exceed 100% of the eligible costs and the contributions declared to them.

G.5 Reporting & payment arrangements

The reporting and payment arrangements are fixed in the grant agreement (Data Sheet, point 4 and articles 21 and 22).

After the grant has been signed, the consortium will normally receive a float to start working on the project (normally, pre-financing of 160% of the average EU funding per reporting period (i.e. maximum grant amount/number of periods); exceptionally, less or no pre-financing). For actions with only one reporting period, it will be less, since 100% would mean the totality of the grant amount.

Payments will be automatically lowered if one of the consortium members has outstanding debts towards the EU (granting authority or other EU bodies). Such debts will be offset by the Agency, in line with the conditions set out in the grant agreement (Article 22).

At the moment of the prefinancing payment, an amount ranging from 5% to 8% of the maximum grant amount will be deducted from the prefinancing payment and transferred to the mutual insurance mechanism. This mechanism covers the risks associated with non-recovery of sums due from the beneficiaries.

There will be one or several interim payments linked to a periodic report, depending on the duration of the project.

At the end of the project, the consortium will be invited to submit a report on the basis of which the final grant amount will be calculated. If the total of earlier payments is higher than the final grant amount, the beneficiaries concerned (or the coordinator) will be asked to pay back the difference (recovery).

G.6 Certificates

Depending on the size of the grant amount and on the type of beneficiaries, beneficiaries may be required to submit a certificate on the financial statements. The thresholds for this certificate are fixed in the grant agreement (Data Sheet, point 4 and Article 24).

G.7 Liability regime for recoveries

The liability regime for recoveries is that of individual financial responsibility. Each beneficiary is liable only for their own debt (and those of its affiliated entities, if any) (Data Sheet point 4.4 and Article 22).

G.8 Open Science and Data Management

For the EIC Pathfinder and Transition, the EIC funded projects must comply with the open science requirements as described in the Model Grant Agreement (article 17). This concern:

ªproviding immediate open access to scientific publications under the conditions required by the grant agreement; 

ªmanaging responsibly research data generated or reused by projects in line with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable data)’. Producing and updating a data management plan; providing open access to research data under the principle ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’, that is with exceptions, under the conditions required by the grant agreement; 

ªproviding information about the research outputs/tools/instruments needed to validate the conclusions of scientific publications or to validate/re-use research data; 

ªproviding digital or physical access to the results needed to validate the conclusions of scientific publications, unless exceptions apply (the same as with open access to research data);

ªin cases of public emergency, if requested by the granting authority, providing immediate open access to all research outputs under open licenses or, if exceptions apply, access under fair and reasonable conditions to legal entities that need the research outputs to address the public emergency.

Further, open science practices that are not mandatory but recommended, may be included in projects at the design phase, such as involving all relevant knowledge actors, including citizens, early and open sharing of research, output management beyond research data, open peer-review. This is a non-exhaustive list of practices that proposers are expected to adopt when possible and appropriate for their projects. Recommended open science practices are incentivised through their evaluation at the proposal stage. Proposers should be aware of both mandatory and recommended practices and integrate them into their proposals.

Data Management

All EIC funded projects must develop and update a data management plan in case they generate or reuse research data or any other research outputs (except for publications). All personal and non-personal data must be managed responsibly in line with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable data), the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 275 and the respective European, international and national legal frameworks. Personal data must not be made public unless explicitly agreed by the data subjects. Non-personal data will be open in principle but exceptions to open access apply (following the principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”).

G.9 Provisions concerning project implementation

–Proper implementation of the action (Article 11).

–Conflict of interest (Article 12).

–Confidentiality and security (EU classified information) (Article 13, Annex 5).

–Ethics (research integrity) and values (gender mainstreaming) (Article 14, Annex 5).

–Data protection (Article 15).

–Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), background and results, access rights and rights of use (Article 16 and Annex 5). 

In addition to the standard provisions, the following specific provisions in the model grant agreement will apply to all grants awarded under this work programme:

–Additional exploitation obligations in case of a public emergency: If requested by the Agency, beneficiaries must grant non-exclusive licences to their results – for a limited period of time specified in the request and on fair and reasonable conditions – to legal entities that need the results to address the public emergency. These legal entities must commit to rapidly and broadly exploiting the resulting products and services on fair and reasonable conditions. This provision will apply up to 4 years after the end of the action.

–Additional information obligation relating to standards: Unless stated otherwise in the specific call conditions, beneficiaries must, up to 4 years after the end of the action, inform the Agency if the results could reasonably be expected to contribute to European or international standards.

Please also see Annex 6 of this Work Programme.

G.10 Granting authority right to object to transfers or licensing

For Horizon Europe EIC actions, the granting authority may, up to 4 years after the end of the action, object to a transfer of ownership or to the exclusive licensing of results. The conditions for this opposition are set out in the Horizon Europe Regulation Article 40(4) 276 .

Annex 3    Fast Track scheme to apply for the EIC Accelerator

The ‘Fast Track’ scheme is a specific process applicable to the EIC Accelerator. It provides for a specific treatment of proposals that result from existing Horizon Europe or Horizon 2020 projects.

Under the Fast Track scheme, applicants do not apply directly to the EIC Accelerator call (Section IV). Instead, a project review is carried out by the responsible granting authority or national funding body to assess the innovation or market deployment potential of an existing project, and to decide whether the project is suitable for support under the EIC Accelerator.

The project review – implemented by the granting authority or national funding body responsible for the programme – must be conducted using:

ªaward criteria equivalent to the ones set out for the short application stage of the EIC Accelerator regarding excellence and impact (Section IV), centred on the underlying idea of that potential new action;

ªa project review process that guarantees an independent assessment and is carried out within the previous two years in compliance with Article 48 of the Horizon Europe Regulation.

The responsible granting authority or national funding body can submit the outcome of the projects review to the EIC Accelerator, if the project review concludes that the following conditions are met:

ªthe proposal meets the first two criteria of the EIC Accelerator (i.e. excellence and impact);

ªthere is no duplication of funding of activities to be supported under the EIC Accelerator with the existing grant; and

ªthe applicant meets the eligibility criteria for the EIC Accelerator.

Fast Track applicants will then be invited to prepare a full proposal for the EIC Accelerator following the notification about the successful result of the initial review. The Fast track Accelerator applicants will be submitted to the same submission limitations that apply to the EIC Accelerator.

They will receive coaching as specified in Section IV.

Full proposals to the EIC Accelerator stemming from the Fast Track scheme will be assessed as set out in Section IV, and will be treated in exactly the same way as all other full proposals.

In 2025, the national funding bodies, schemes, projects and beneficiaries which are eligible for the Fast Track for EIC Accelerator cut-off dates are:

ªThe EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition projects (including under EIC pilot) managed by the Agency; 

ªRelevant schemes managed by the Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), as identified as relevant by each KIC;

ªFunding schemes for SMEs supported under the Eurostars-2 Joint Programme and the Partnership on Innovative SMEs managed by the Eureka secretariat and relevant national bodies; 

ªCompanies awarded a grant only under the Horizon 2020 EIC pilot Accelerator and the Horizon Europe EIC Accelerator managed by the Agency. 277  

ªCompanies awarded grants under the Pre-accelerator funding scheme;

ªCompanies awarded grants under the Women Tech.EU scheme.

These national funding bodies are responsible for implementing the Fast Track scheme in accordance with the above provisions. They may decide not to implement the scheme or to introduce it at a later stage.

Subject to experience with the Fast Track scheme, the scheme may be opened to other parts of Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020, and to the funding bodies responsible for their implementation.

The EIC website will provide up to date information about how the Fast Track scheme is being implemented by the relevant funding bodies.

Annex 4    Pilot Plug-in scheme to apply for the EIC Accelerator

The pilot Plug-in scheme is a specific process applicable to the EIC Accelerator only. Its process is equivalent to the Fast Track, as described under Annex 3. However, the Plug-in scheme applies to proposals that result from existing national or regional programmes.

Under the Plug-in scheme, applicants do not apply directly to the EIC Accelerator call (Section IV). Instead, a project review is carried out by the certified national or regional programme to assess the innovation or market deployment potential of an existing project supported by the programme, and to decide whether the project is suitable for support under the EIC Accelerator.

The project review - implemented by the funding/managing body responsible for the programme or by other appointed authority under the responsibility of the funding body - must be conducted using:

ªaward criteria equivalent to the ones set out for the short application stage of the EIC Accelerator (Section IV), centred on the underlying idea of that potential new action;

ªequivalent evaluation processes that guarantee an independent assessment of proposals in compliance with Article 48 of the Horizon Europe Regulation.

The responsible funding/managing body, or other appointed authority under the responsibility of the funding body, can submit the outcome of the project review to the EIC Accelerator, if the project review concludes that the following conditions are met:

ªthe proposal meets the first two criteria of the EIC Accelerator (i.e. excellence and impact);

ªthere is no duplication of funding of activities to be supported under the EIC Accelerator with the existing grant allocated at national or regional level; and

ªthe applicant meets the eligibility criteria for the EIC Accelerator.

Applicants will then be invited to prepare a full proposal for the EIC Accelerator on the same basis as applicants passing Step 1 of the EIC Accelerator calls.

The EIC Plug In Accelerator applicants will be submitted to the same submission limitations that apply to the EIC accelerator. They will receive support through coaching as specified in Section IV.

Full proposals to the EIC Accelerator stemming from the Plug-in scheme will be assessed as set out in Section IV (above) and will be treated exactly the same way as all other full proposals.

The Commission certifies the programmes that are deemed suitable for the Plug-in scheme based on independent experts’ assessment. The experts will collaborate with the EIC Plug-in contact points (representatives of Member States and Associated Countries) who will have to provide accurate information regarding the programmes. Only programmes for which all the key elements and information are provided by the EIC Plug-in contact points will be considered for the certification.

A first set of programmes have been certified to be compliant with the requirements of the Plug-in scheme for a pilot phase. Subject to the outcome of a review of this pilot, further programmes may be assessed during 2025 and may also be certified to be compliant with the Plug-in scheme. A full list of certified programmes for the Plug-in scheme is available on the EIC website.

The Commission services 278 will be notified if any future changes in the criteria and/or evaluation of the regional or national programmes may impact the assessment and certification of those programmes.

The Commission may withdraw the certification, if it finds out that:

ªfalse information was used to obtain the certification;

ªthe project review did not comply with the provisions as set out in the EIC work programme.

The funding/managing bodies in charge of these national/regional programmes, or other appointed authority under the responsibility of the funding body, are responsible for implementing the Plug-in scheme in accordance with the above provisions. They may decide not to implement the scheme or to introduce it at a later stage. A coordination among the different national and regional funding bodies will have to be ensured at national level to avoid duplication of the proposals.

After the certification process is concluded, the responsible funding/managing bodies, or other appointed authorities under the responsibility of the funding body, are entitled to present the projects that have passed the project review and were funded under those certified programmes. In the pilot phase, a limitation for the number of projects proposed by each programme and each Member State or Associated Country will be agreed.

Annex 5    Booster grants for EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition Awardees

In line with Article 47(2) of the Horizon Europe Regulation, 279 with the aim to implement Portfolio coordinating activities or to nurture innovation out of these, Booster grants of a fixed amount not exceeding EUR 50 000 may be awarded outside any call for proposal to EIC Awardees, Technology Transfer Offices, EIC Inventors and other third parties linked to projects already selected under the Pathfinder or where relevant Transition calls (EIC Pathfinder projects including grants resulting from certain EIC pilot Pathfinder, FET-Open and FET-Proactive calls, see Section III and of EIC Transition projects)

Additionally, and for the purpose of further assessing innovation potentialities and explore potential pathways to commercialisation out of these projects results (preliminary or final), applicants may also be EIC Awardees, Technology Transfer Offices, EIC Inventors and other third parties provided with the necessary access rights or entrusted with any such task by the concerned awardee. Booster grants may in particular support the development of potential innovation stemming from the future EIC Market Place. Complementary activities to explore potential pathways to commercialisation (Innovation activities) could include, but are not limited to:

ªdefinition of a commercialisation process;

ªmarket and competitiveness analysis;

ªtechnology assessment and/or certification;

ªverification of innovation potential;

ªconsolidation of IP rights;

ª freedom to operate (FTO);

ªbusiness case development;

ªtesting, piloting with users or potential customers.;

ªexploratory / preparatory work for creating start-ups or spin-offs;

ªsupport for hosting by a public or private incubator/ accelerator.

ªsupport in participating to Tech2Market BAS programme (in particular Business Validation Programme and/or Venture Building Programme);

Portfolio activities could include, but are not limited to:

ªdefining common objectives and activities;

ªbuilding synergies within the EIC Portfolio and with any outside relevant partners, including within the EIT Community;

ªengaging strategic partners to overcome common challenges;

ª(co)-organising events;

ªmaximising data sharing;

ªraising visibility of the EIC Portfolio’s community and the EIC.

These Booster grants do not fund research, or activities that were already foreseen in the original project or that are already funded by other EIC instruments. A maximum of three Booster grants can be awarded for each EIC Pathfinder project and more than three may be awarded in exceptional and duly justified cases. A maximum of one Booster grant can be awarded for each EIC Transition project and more than one may be awarded in exceptional and duly justified cases. Any such Booster grant can be awarded to an individual EIC awardee or a group of EIC Awardees. 280

EIC Awardees or other potential booster grant beneficiary as indicated above can be invited to apply at any time for an Booster grant following a positive recommendation from an EIC Programme Manager or a project review or a participation in the EIC Tech2Market BAS programme, in particular Business Validation Programme and/or Venture Building Programme (Opportunities exploration phase or Team creation). Each proposal will be assessed in accordance with Article 29, paragraph 2, of Horizon Europe Regulation taking into account the following considerations (“award criteria”):

For activities to explore potential pathways to commercialisation:

ªTimeliness and pertinence of the activities proposed (Excellence);

ªPotential of the proposed deep-tech innovation to create new market or to solve pressing societal needs / problems (Impact);

ªExpertise, capabilities and motivation of the applicants to take this innovation forward to the market (Quality and efficiency of implementation).

For portfolio activities:

ªContribution of the activity to the objectives of the EIC Portfolio (Excellence);

ªTimeliness of the activity proposed to maximise its impact (Impact);

ªEngagement of EIC Portfolio’s projects and relevant external partners (Quality and efficiency of implementation).

Each proposal will be evaluated by a mixed evaluation committee composed of:

ªAn EIC Programme Manager.

ªAn external expert selected from a limited pool of trained experts, covering the broad technology areas.

ªEither an EIC Project Officer or a second external expert.

The evaluation committee will assess whether the proposal meets each of the award criteria and will give a GO or NO GO. Proposals receiving at least two GO will be selected. Proposals not receiving at least two GO will be rejected. The evaluation committee may invite a rejected applicant to resubmit an adjusted proposal.

The implementation of Booster grants for Innovation activities will be performed by the CSA beneficiary selected under the call for proposals HORIZON-EIC-2024-BOOSTER.

Annex 6    Additional provisions concerning Intellectual Property for EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition

In accordance with the Horizon Europe Regulation, 281 the current Work Programme provides for additional dissemination and exploitation obligations in particular to facilitate the exploitation of results, and to enable a more pro-active role to the Commission and EISMEA identifying and maximising exploitation opportunities in the Union.

Together with specific intellectual property rules provided for under annex 5 of the Model Grant agreement, the following rules will apply to EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition actions.

1. Definitions

The following definition is complementing those provided in the Glossary in the introductory section of this Work Programme for the purpose of this Annex.

With reference to information and results owned by any EIC Awardee that is a not-for-profit legal entity, EIC Inventors are any of their employees and subcontractors, established in a Member States or Associated Country, and appearing or entitled to appear as inventor in any corresponding patent filing and according to the definition of inventor for the relevant patent jurisdiction.

2. Exchange of information for the purpose of EIC portfolio activities

282 2.1 – Access to information about results

a.At any time and without prejudice to the EIC Awardee’s ownership of results the EIC Programme Manager may request any EIC Awardee to facilitate information on results (preliminary or final) generated by the action, subject to paragraphs b) and c) below, with the aim to probe their potential for further innovation.

b.Where any such result (preliminary or final) was not already made public through agreed dissemination activities or a patent or protection by any other intellectual property right, that information shall be earmarked and treated by the Agency as confidential and disseminated only to: 

ªother EIC Awardees, bound by an EIC grant agreement or an EIC contract, that refers to or includes the obligations detailed under section 2.2 below;

ªEIC inventors having signed a non-disclosure agreement with the Agency, providing for the obligations detailed under section 2.2 below;

ªother member of the EIC Community platform established in a Member State or an Associated Country and having signed a non-disclosure agreement with the Agency, providing for the obligations detailed under section 2.2.

Where based on that confidential information any of above mentioned entities request disclosure or access to the underlying detailed data and results, the EIC Awardee may refuse it based on its legitimate interests, including commercial exploitation and any other constraints, such as data protection rules, privacy, confidentiality, trade secrets, Union competitive interests, security rules or intellectual property rights.

c.EIC Awardees may object to the obligation provided for under paragraph b) when:

ªcommitting to either publish or patent or protect by any other intellectual property right and without unreasonable delays, or

ªdemonstrating concrete exploitation of the said preliminary findings and results, subject to initial discussion with and final agreement of the Agency on the corresponding update of the Plan for dissemination and exploitation referred to in Section 3.1.

2.2 – Non-disclosure obligations

Where EIC Awardees are informed on or given access or disclosure to any preliminary findings, results or other intellectual property generated by other EIC actions, and where this information is earmarked as confidential in accordance with section 2.1.b, they must:

ª keep it strictly confidential; and

ªnot disclose it to any person without the prior written consent of the owner, and then only under conditions of confidentiality equal to those provided under this section; and

ªuse the same degree of care to protect its confidentiality as the EIC awardee uses to protect its own confidential information of a similar nature; and

ªact in good faith at all times; and

ªnot use any of it for any purpose other than assessing opportunities to propose other research or innovation activities to the EIC, or any other initiative agreed by the owner.

These EIC Awardees may disclose any such information to their employees and, with the prior authorisation of the owner, to their subcontractors established in a Member State or an Associated Country if these subcontractors:

ªneed to access it for the performance of their work with respect to the purpose permitted as above; and

ªare bound by a written agreement or professional obligation to protect its confidentiality in the way described in this section.

No obligations are imposed upon the EIC Awardee where such information:

ªis already known to the EIC awardee before and is not subject to any other obligation of confidentiality; or

ªis or becomes publicly known through no act by or default by/of the EIC awardee; or

ªis obtained by the EIC awardee from a third party and in circumstances where the EIC awardee has no reason to believe that there has been a breach of an obligation of confidentiality.

The restrictions in this section do not apply if such information is required to be disclosed by any law or regulation, by any judicial or governmental order or request, or pursuant to disclosure requirements relating to the listing of the stock of the EIC awardee on any recognised stock exchange.

Upon the end or termination of the grant agreement or of the participation of the EIC awardee, it must immediately cease to use the said information, except if otherwise directly agreed with the owner, or if the EIC awardee remains a member of the EIC Community referred to under section 2.1.b.

The provisions of this section will be in force for a period of 60 months following the end or the termination of the grant agreement or of the participation of the EIC awardee, at the end of which period they will cease to have effect.

3. Specific provisions on intellectual property and related dissemination and exploitation activities

3.1 – Plan for exploitation and dissemination

EIC Awardees must report to the Agency on their exploitation and dissemination activities:

ªin accordance with the grant agreement, together with any updated version of the plan for exploitation and dissemination;

ªwithin 30 days upon request from the EIC Programme Manager for the purpose of EIC portfolio activities.

The Agency may also request an update of the plan for exploitation and dissemination of the results at any time during the implementation of the action.

EIC Awardees must address and agree in their Consortium agreement on all related intellectual property issues, from ownership and co-ownership of results to the consortium’s internal approval process for their dissemination. EIC Awardees must also identify therein any pre-existing technology fitting the action’s needs and objectives and try to reach appropriate licensing agreement between them to prevent research funding redundancy.

The EIC Awardees are deemed to have signed the Consortium agreement at the date of the signature of this grant agreement. The Agency may require a copy at any time in accordance with the grant agreement.

3.2 – Dissemination activities

Each EIC awardee will propose and undertake dissemination activities of the plan for exploitation and dissemination agreed by the Agency with the aim of supporting innovation in the European Union and fostering the development of the EIC Community, opting for publications as main route to bring technical and scientific knowledge to the public.

When approving the plan for exploitation and dissemination of the results or any update, the Agency may subject any proposed dissemination activity to one or a combination of the following conditions:

ªthe prior assessment of any innovation potential of the results to be disseminated,

ªthe prior protection of the result to be disseminated, in accordance with the grant agreement, the cost being eligible;

Where the Agency disagrees to a dissemination activity, it will actively assist the EIC Awardees to achieve compliance with the required conditions, without unreasonable delay and in due time, notably by proposing complementary EIC support for exploitation or a support of the Business Acceleration Services, as detailed and referred to under section V.I. Where the Agency agrees to a dissemination activity, it will abide to the grant agreement.

The Agency is hereby entrusted with the right to also disseminate and promote the exploitation of any results that are made public by the EIC awardee or with its assent.

3.3 – Exploitation of results

EIC Awardees must use their best efforts to exploit their results or have them exploited by a third party, in priority those established in a Member State or an Associated Country, including through transfer or licensing. The Agency may object to a transfer of ownership or the exclusive licensing of results under certain conditions as detailed in the EIC grant agreement.

EIC Awardees must report on any exploitation operation :

ªat the reporting periods provided for in the grant agreement;

ªwith the periodicity agreed at the end of the action together with the final exploitation and dissemination plan;

ªwithin 30 days upon request from the Agency, within 4 years after final payment.

Each EIC Awardee agrees upon signature of the grant agreement, to ensure the necessary support or access rights for the further development and exploitation of results that any of its EIC Inventors have contributed to (respecting the transfer rule).

If the EIC Awardee provides financial or other support to the EIC Inventor for any such exploitation, royalties or other returns may be shared with the EIC Awardee on mutually beneficial terms, provided the conclusion of any such agreement does not prevent the EIC Inventor(s) to exercise their rights. Such financial support should include as a minimum the full or partial funding of the costs of relevant Intellectual Property Right protection in major jurisdictions. Other support includes expertise, access to infrastructure and facilities, or other forms of support. The royalties and other returns to the EIC Awardee should be fair and proportionate to the financial and other support provided.

If the EIC Awardee does not commit to provide support within a maximum period of 6 months from the date of the first formal request from the EIC Inventor, or that support is manifestly inadequate, then the EIC Awardee must entrust sufficient access rights to allow the EIC Inventor to further develop and exploit the result. If the EIC Awardee does not provide support for exploitation, then by default the access rights to the EIC Inventor are royalty free. 

The EIC Inventor must inform the EIC Awardee in due time before any exploitation activity they intend to undertake, and report to the EIC Awardee on the implementation of the exploitation activity.

If the EIC Awardee considers that the exploitation activity could negatively affect its own exploitation activities:

ªIn the absence of any approved exploitation and dissemination plan, the EIC Awardee may request to the Agency the suspension of the access rights of a given EIC Inventor, by demonstrating that their use puts negatively at stake their future strategy of or ongoing valorisation activities.

ªWhere an exploitation and dissemination plan has been approved, the EIC Awardee may directly suspend the access rights of a given EIC Inventor if this would negatively affect the implementation of the said approved plan. The EIC Inventor may request the Agency to lift that suspension by demonstrating that the exercise of the access rights does not affect the said plan.

3.4 – Failure to exploit or disseminate

The Agency is entrusted with the right to disseminate and promote the exploitation of results that have not been made public through dissemination activities or patent or protection by any other IPR, where the EIC awardee owning it:

ªdoes not provide any information regarding exploitation or dissemination of those results; or

ªneither intends to exploit nor disseminate those results; or

ªdeclares to continue research activities on those results but without a view of their subsequent exploitation; or

ªwhere, despite its best efforts, no exploitation or dissemination takes place within the delays provided in the final exploitation and dissemination plan set out in the grant agreement and in the absence of any demonstrated alternative exploitation or dissemination opportunity.

Where the EIC awardee continues to oppose to the dissemination by the Agency or refuses to provide any data or document necessary for the said dissemination, the Agency may impose penalties in accordance with the grant agreement.

(1)

In line with Article 12 (1) (b) Council Decision 2021/764

(2)

European Innovation Council (EIC) Board (E03823) at

https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/expert-groups-register/screen/expert-groups?lang=en

(3)

As defined in the Glossary

(4)

https://eic.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2023-08/EIC_Board_Statement_Widening_final31072023.pdf

(5)

  Regulation - EU - 2024/795 - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu)

(6)

 Article 48 of Regulation - 2021/695 - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu)

(7)

  Regulation - EU - 2024/795 - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu)

(8)

  Regulation - EU - 2024/1735 - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu)

(9)

  European Critical Raw Materials Act (europa.eu)

(10)

  Regulation (EU) 2023/1781 European Chips Act

(11)

  Health Emergency Preparedness and Response (HERA) - European Commission (europa.eu)

(12)

 This table provides a simplified overview. All applicants need to read the relevant sections for the full information on eligibility and conditions for funding, including Annex 2. As affiliated entities do not sign the grant agreement, they do not count towards the minimum eligibility criteria for consortium composition (if any). The Director-General responsible for the call may decide to open the calls up to one month prior to or after the envisaged date(s) of opening. The Director-General responsible may delay the call deadline(s) by up to two months.

(13)

 Appointed in accordance with point 1.2.2. of Pillar III in Annex I to Council Decision 2021/764, EIC Programme Managers are temporary staff employed by the Agency to manage one or more EIC Portfolios.

(14)

In line with Article 28(3) and Article 29(2) of the Horizon Europe Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2021/695) of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 April 2021 establishing Horizon Europe – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, laying down its rules for participation and dissemination, and repealing Regulations (EU) No 1290/2013 and (EU) No 1291/2013, OJ L 170, 12.5.2021, p. 1, (“Horizon Europe Regulation”).

(15)

  Regulation - EU - 2024/795 - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu)

(16)

For the EIC Accelerator, the Intellectual Property rules are included in the contract and/or investment agreement.

(17)

Joint Communication by the European Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy: European Economic Security Strategy, 26.06.2023, JOIN (2023) 20 final

(18)

  Commission Recommendation of 03 October 2023 on critical technology areas for the EU's economic security for further risk assessment with Member States - European Commission (europa.eu)

(19)

 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509

(20)

i.e., the legal entities which sign the grant agreement and/or the investment agreement and, on this basis, become beneficiaries of grants and/or investees respectively.

(21)

Consolidated list of sanctions:

https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage_en/8442/Consolidated%20list%20of%20sanctions  

(22)

See Council Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 of 31 July 2014 concerning restrictive measures in view of Russia's actions destabilising the situation in Ukraine. OJ L 229, 31.7.2014, p.1. , as last amended by Council Regulation [please insert the references of the regulation on the 14th package].

(23)

 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 .

(24)

 Pursuant to Article 9(2) of Directive (EU) 2015/849 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 2015 on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing, amending Regulation (EU) No 648/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council, and repealing Directive 2005/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Commission Directive 2006/70/EC (OJ L 141, 5.6.2015, p. 73), as may be amended.

(25)

 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 . 

(26)

 These definitions are complemented by specific definitions regarding provisions concerning management of EIC Portfolios and Intellectual Property for EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition actions detailed in Annex 6.

(27)

 Deep tech ventures have the following characteristics: positioning at the knowledge frontier with long and uncertain R&I cycles; relates to tangible products and industrialisation processes; linked to the ecosystem and especially higher education institutions, problem orientated, or mission driven, focused on the creation of an option space and a dynamic de-risking cycle.

(28)

 Ratio of a firm's R&D investment to its revenue.

(29)

  HE Model grant agreement  

(30)

As foreseen in Article 2(23), Regulation (EU) 2021/695 establishing Horizon Europe-the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, laying down its rules for participation and dissemination, and repealing Regulations (EU) No 1290/2013 and (EU) No 1291/2013

(31)

As foreseen in Article  4 of  Regulation (EU) 2024/795 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 February 2024 establishing the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP), and amending Directive 2003/87/EC and Regulations (EU) 2021/1058, (EU) 2021/1056, (EU) 2021/1057, (EU) No 1303/2013, (EU) No 223/2014, (EU) 2021/1060, (EU) 2021/523, (EU) 2021/695, (EU) 2021/697 and (EU) 2021/241 (europa.eu)

(32)

  About the EIC Fund - European Commission (europa.eu)  

(33)

  The EIC Forum is supported under the ‘European Innovation Ecosystems’ part of the Horizon Europe work programme.

(34)

Information on public funding bodies that recognise and support Seal of Excellence projects is available at https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/funding/funding-opportunities/seal-excellence .

(35)

Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003 concerning the definition of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (2003/361/EC), OJ L 124, 20.5.2003, p. 36.

(36)

Where the staff headcount is calculated in accordance with Articles 3, 4, 5 and 6 of Title I of the Annex of Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC.

(37)

Further information on market readiness and business readiness will be provided in the guidance documents.

(38)

See for instance for health:

https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/career-development/researchers/manual-scientific-entrepreneurship/major-steps/trl

(39)

IP includes industrial property (patents, trademarks, designs and geographic indications of source) and copyright. See also Section I and Annex 6 for more information on the EIC policy of Open Access and IP rights.

(40)

The eligible calls are all EIC Pathfinder calls under Horizon Europe and the following Horizon 2020 calls: FETOPEN-RIA-2014-2015; FETOPEN-01-2016-2017; FETOPEN-01-2018-2019-2020; H2020-FETPROACT-2014; FETPROACT-01-2016; FETPROACT-01-2018; FETPROACT-EIC-05-2019; FETPROACT-EIC-07-2020; FETPROACT-EIC-08-2020.

(41)

general-mga_horizon-euratom_en.pdf (europa.eu) , general-mga_horizon-euratom_en.pdf (europa.eu)

(42)

The call will open on 20 February 2025. The Director-General responsible for the call may decide to open the call up to one month prior to or after the envisaged date(s) of opening. The Director-General responsible may delay the deadline(s) by up to two months.

(43)

This decision is available on the Funding & Tenders Portal, in the reference documents section for Horizon Europe, under ‘Simplified costs decisions’ or through this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/ls-decision_he_en.pdf  

(44)

The eligible calls are all EIC Pathfinder calls under Horizon Europe and the following Horizon 2020 calls: FETOPEN-RIA-2014-2015; FETOPEN-01-2016-2017; FETOPEN-01-2018-2019-2020; H2020-FETPROACT-2014; FETPROACT-01-2016; FETPROACT-01-2018; FETPROACT-EIC-05-2019; FETPROACT-EIC-07-2020; FETPROACT-EIC-08-2020.

(45)

The call will open on 28-July-2025. The Director-General responsible for the call may decide to open the call up to one month prior to or after the envisaged date(s) of opening. The Director-General responsible may delay the deadline(s) by up to two months.

(46)

 To be published in the EIC website,  European Innovation Council - European Commission (europa.eu)

(47)

  Actions to boost biotechnology and biomanufacturing in EU (europa.eu)

(48)

  EU Mission: A Soil Deal for Europe (europa.eu)

(49)

  The European Green Deal - European Commission (europa.eu)

(50)

  Farm to Fork Strategy - European Commission (europa.eu)

(51)

  REGULATION (EU) 2024/1991 – Nature restauration Law

(52)

  Fit for 55: Delivering on the proposals - European Commission (europa.eu)

(53)

  REPowerEU (europa.eu)

(54)

  Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI | Shaping Europe’s digital future (europa.eu)  

(55)

  https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2019/640163/EPRS_BRI(2019)640163_EN.pdf  

(56)

Regulation - EU - 2024/1689 - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu)

(57)

https://cancerimage.eu/

(58)

  European Cancer Imaging Initiative  

(59)

  HealthDCAT-AP

(60)

See Pathfinder Challenge Guide

(61)

  European approach to artificial intelligence | Shaping Europe’s digital future (europa.eu) ; Commission launches AI innovation package to support Artificial Intelligence startups and SMEs | Shaping Europe’s digital future (europa.eu)

(62)

A cancer plan for Europe - European Commission (europa.eu)

(63)

  EU Mission : Cancer - European Commission (europa.eu)

(64)

  The European Green Deal - European Commission (europa.eu)

(65)

  European approach to artificial intelligence | Shaping Europe’s digital future (europa.eu)

(66)

  Strategic plan - European Commission (europa.eu)

(67)

Solar reforming: Sunlight-driven transformation of waste substrates into valuable chemical products facilitated by a photocatalyst and utilising a wide range of the solar spectrum, including solar catalytic reforming (UV and VIS) and solar thermal reforming (IR). It thus goes beyond: Photolysis (polymer degradation under direct light irradiation with very long treatment times), Photocatalytic decomposition (photolysis facilitated by photocatalyst), or Photoreforming (Light-driven reforming using classical photocatalysts absorbing high-energy UV or near-UV radiation only).

(68)

Brine mining: Recovery of useful materials dissolved in seawater desalinization brine.

(69)

Integrated capture and conversion: the capture of a molecule, e.g., CO2, from a waste stream is directly coupled with its direct utilization, i.e. conversion, within a single device.

(70)

  REPowerEU (europa.eu)

(71)

  Fit for 55: Delivering on the proposals - European Commission (europa.eu)

(72)

  Renewable Energy Directive (europa.eu)

(73)

  Waste Framework Directive - European Commission (europa.eu)

(74)

  European Critical Raw Materials Act - European Commission (europa.eu)

(75)

  Circular economy action plan - European Commission (europa.eu)

(76)

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM%3A2024%3A62%3AFIN&qid=1707312980822

(77)

  com_2021_800_en_0.pdf (europa.eu)

(78)

  Renewable Energy Directive (europa.eu)

(79)

Usual components are products or services provided, market analysis, competition analysis, marketing strategy, organisation & management, financial projections.

(80)

It usually includes value proposition, target market(s), revenue streams, cost structure, channels.

(81)

Business model is a key component of the business plan.

(82)

 Business plan and business model will have to be further refine and validate during the project lifetime.

(83)

In line with the Do No Significant Harm principle, see Introduction.

(84)

 Eligible projects are those funded under the following calls: FETOPEN-RIA-2014-2015; FETOPEN-01-2016-2017; FETOPEN-01-2018-2019-2020;; FETPROACT-01-2016; FETPROACT-01-2018; FETPROACT-EIC-05-2019; FETPROACT-EIC-07-2020; FETHPC-01-2016, FETHPC-02-2017, FETHPC-01-2018, FETPROACT-EIC-08-2020; FETPROACT-09-2020; FETFLAG-05-2020 (for projects funded under the related Specific Grant Agreements);

(85)

Grants funded via financial support to third parties e.g., ERA NETs/ co-funded partnerships, EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities) will not be eligible as it is not possible to verify if the result was generated by such projects.

(86)

Applicants must prove the grant from which the result was generated was funded by Horizon 2020 or Horizon Europe (including JUs unless they implement FSTP grants) by specifying the relevant grant number and acronym as indicated in the EU Funding & Tenders Portal.

(87)

Applications under the EIC Transition Funding scheme must focus exclusively on civil applications.

(88)

EIC Transition innovation discovery tool: https://innovation-radar.ec.europa.eu/eic-transition For results already listed on the Innovation Radar platform the unique id of that innovation / result (available on the innovation’s page of the Innovation Radar platform) should be provided in the proposal submission.

(89)

A spin-off from research performing organisation (university, research or technology organisation) having a legal (e.g., contractual cooperation not limited to the action, e.g., a collaboration agreement for research in a particular field) or capital (research performing organisation owning a controlling share in the capital of the spin -off) can be considered as an affiliated entity according to Article 8 of the Grant Agreement.

(90)

Consortia of more than 5 eligible entities will be deemed ineligible.

(91)

 This decision is available on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal, in the reference documents section for Horizon Europe, under ‘Simplified costs decisions’ or through this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/ls-decision_he_en.pdf

(92)

The call will open on 22-April-2025. The Director-General responsible for the call may decide to open the call up to one month prior to or after the envisaged date(s) of opening. The Director-General responsible may delay the deadline(s) by up to two months.

(93)

The definition of women-led SMEs and consortia is provided in the Glossary in the Introduction.

(94)

The number of participants to the interview must however be limited to the minimum necessary.

(95)

 If two proposals with the same remote evaluation score are on the reserve list, the one with smaller budget will be ranked first.

(96)

The technology must be developed in a safe, secure and reliable manner. Proposals which involve the development, use or deployment of AI based systems/techniques must be technically robust (e.g., resilient to attack, secure and safe, having fallback plan, accurate, reliable and reproducible). To a degree matching the type of research being proposed (from basic to precompetitive) they must demonstrate that they comply with the Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence Principles (see Annex 2).

(97)

In line with the Do Not Significant Harm principle, see Introduction. Proposals with potential nuclear applications including those within the scope of Annex I to the Euratom Treaty are eligible for funding.

(98)

In such cases, the applicant must use the same identification (PIC number) when submitting the full application in order to eligible.

(99)

See Annex 1 for full information about the budget.

(100)

  Decision authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025)

(101)

  Decision authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025)

(102)

  Funding & tenders (europa.eu)

(103)

In certain cases, investments can be made in holding structures of the beneficiary company, subject to the provisions of the EIC Fund Investment Guidelines

(104)

In the case of the investment component, the financial support may exceptionally be revised following a periodic or final review of an EIC Accelerator project (in line with Article 48(12), second sub paragraph of the Horizon Europe Regulation), also in light of the terms and conditions established in the investment agreement. The EIC Investment Guidelines are available on the EIC website.

(105)

  220301 EIC Investment Guidelines - Horizon Europe March 2022 FINAL (1)_0.pdf (europa.eu)

(106)

To be interpreted as all applicants has completed all aspects of TRL 5: validation in relevant environment.

(107)

 This decision is available on the Funding & Tenders Portal, in the reference documents section for Horizon Europe, under ‘Simplified costs decisions’ or through this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/ls-decision_he_en.pdf  

(108)

  Funding & tenders (europa.eu)

(109)

 All personal data will be processed in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data.

(110)

 It is nevertheless up to the applicants to decide if and when to use the coaching services.

(111)

This call is continuously open, and applications can be submitted at any time. From the day of the opening of the call the conditions detailed in this work programme become applicable. The Director-General responsible may delay the cut-off(s) by up to two months. Applicants will be invited to select an EIC business coach out of a dedicated database and may receive 3 days of remote coaching.

(112)

There are no limits on the number of slides at full application stage, but the applicant must be able to present at the Jury interview in a maximum of 10 minutes.

(113)

This period includes the consensus meetings.

(114)

Such as KYC (Know Your Customer), AML/CTF (Anti-Money Laundering / Combating the Financing of Terrorism), Tax compliance, Sanctions, etc.

(115)

The investment decisions will also be reported to the Programme Committee in accordance with Article 14 of Council Decision (EU) 2021/764.

(116)

 Projects must comply with the ‘do no significant harm’ principle enshrined in Article 17 of the EU Taxonomy Regulation as part of the eligibility criteria.

(117)

In accordance to Article 48(7) of the Horizon Europe regulation. To make Seal of Excellence operational applicants must give the consent to share basic data about their application with other alternative funding and support bodies.

(118)

As STEP Seal beneficiary, you might be requested to provide additional documentation for the purpose of an Ownership and Control Assessment where there is such requirement.

(119)

Submissions as from 1 January 2024

(120)

Higher amounts for follow on investments are available by applying under the EIC STEP Scale-up call.

(121)

In accordance with Article 48(12), second subparagraph, of the Horizon Europe Regulation. The Programme Committee shall be informed of such cases.

(122)

These cases stem from the advice of the EIC Board.

(123)

Investments will be considered strategic where without securing the investment in the Union there is a risk of dependency of a critical technology on a limited number of third country suppliers. This assessment will be made as part of the amending Commission Award Decision. See also section on economic security of the introduction.

(124)

In case of equity only, the parent or holding company will have to submit the application.

(125)

Where necessary, via an amendment to the grant agreement.

(126)

With the exception of the Next Generation EU component of the budget.

(127)

For further information on the scope and objectives of STEP, see the Guidance Note concerning certain provisions of Regulation (EU) 2024/795 establishing the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP). C(2025)3148 of 8 May 2024.

(128)

OECD ENV/CBC/MONO(2022)29

(129)

  Advanced Materials for Industrial Leadership - European Commission (europa.eu)

(130)

  Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform - European Union (europa.eu)

(131)

  Advanced Materials for Industrial Leadership - European Commission (europa.eu)

(132)

  The European Green Deal - European Commission (europa.eu)

(133)

  The New European Innovation Agenda - European Commission (europa.eu)

(134)

  Digital Europe Programme - European Commission (europa.eu)

(135)

  European economic security strategy - Publications Office of the EU (europa.eu)

(136)

  Materials 2030 Initiative | (ami2030.eu)

(137)

  Actions to boost biotechnology and biomanufacturing in EU (europa.eu)

(138)

  Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform - European Union (europa.eu)

(139)

IPCC, Pathak, M., Slade, R., Pichs-Madruga, R., Ürge-Vorsatz, D., Shukla, P. R. and Skea, J. (2022), ‘Technical summary’, in Shukla, P. R., Skea, J., Slade, R., Al Khourdajie, A., van Diemen, R., McCollum, D., Pathak, M., Some, S., Vyas, P., Fradera, R., Belkacemi, M., Hasija, A., Lisboa, G., Luz, S. and Malley J., (eds), Climate Change 2022 – Mitigation of climate change: Contribution of Working Group III to the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, and New York, NY

(140)

  What are Biopesticides? | US EPA

(141)

  Actions to boost biotechnology and biomanufacturing in EU (europa.eu)

(142)

  EU Mission: A Soil Deal for Europe (europa.eu)

(143)

  The European Green Deal - European Commission (europa.eu)

(144)

  Farm to Fork Strategy - European Commission (europa.eu)

(145)

  Fit for 55: Delivering on the proposals - European Commission (europa.eu)

(146)

  REPowerEU (europa.eu)

(147)

  Regulation (EU) 2024/1991 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 June 2024 on nature restoration and amending Regulation (EU) 2022/869 (europa.eu)

(148)

  Ensuring availability and affordability of fertilisers - European Commission (europa.eu)

(149)

  https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-launches-ai-innovation-package-support-artificial-intelligence-startups-and-smes https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_383

(150)

  AI Act | Shaping Europe’s digital future (europa.eu)

(151)

  Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform - European Union (europa.eu)

(152)

  https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/communication-boosting-startups-and-innovation-trustworthy-artificial-intelligence

(153)

  AI Act | Shaping Europe’s digital future (europa.eu)

(154)

  European approach to artificial intelligence | Shaping Europe’s digital future (europa.eu)

(155)

  EuroHPC JU regulation is published in the Official Journal of the European Union - European Commission (europa.eu)

(156)

 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509

(157)

i.e., the legal entities which sign the grant agreement and/or the investment agreement and, on this basis, become beneficiaries of grants and/or investees respectively.

(158)

 'i.e., the legal entity which signs the grant agreement.

(159)

OECD member countries have demonstrated a commitment to trustworthy and human-centric AI, as outlined by their adoption of OECD principles. Collaboration with India, Singapore, and Mercosur countries fosters not only technological advancements but also the ethical and secure deployment of AI aligned with European values. The Trade and Technology Council with India, the Digital Partnership with Singapore, and the Framework Cooperation Agreement with Mercosur, serve to mitigate the strategic and technological risks for collaboration with these countries.

(160)

  Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform - European Union (europa.eu)

(161)

  sria-final-version-january-2020-.pdf (starseu.net)

(162)

  Space Traffic Management - European Commission (europa.eu)  

(163)

  In-Orbit Demonstration and Validation (IOD/IOV) - European Commission (europa.eu)

(164)

  In-Space Operations; Act in Space; ISOS (europa.eu)

(165)

A module that can be attached to a satellite platform in space via an available universal service interface (USI) by means of on-orbit servicing and that enables a functional upgrade (plug-and-play concept).

(166)

 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509

(167)

 i.e., the legal entities which sign the grant agreement and/or the investment agreement and, on this basis, become beneficiaries of grants and/or investees respectively.

(168)

  Mobility Strategy - European Commission (europa.eu)

(169)

  Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform - European Union (europa.eu)

(170)

  Safe and sustainable by design - European Commission (europa.eu)

(171)

  Renewable and Low-Carbon Fuels Value Chain Industrial Alliance - European Commission (europa.eu)

(172)

  The European Green Deal - European Commission (europa.eu)

(173)

  Mobility Strategy - European Commission (europa.eu)

(174)

  The Net-Zero Industry Act (europa.eu)

(175)

EIC STEP Scale Up call is a specific call as part of the EIC Accelerator as defined under Article 48 of the Horizon Europe Regulation - 2021/695 - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu) following its amendment by Article 17(2) of the STEP Regulation . The same provisions on indirect management and on parent and holding companies as set out under the Accelerator call apply.

(176)

  Guidance Note concerning certain provisions of Regulation (EU) 2024/795 establishing the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP)  

(177)

Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP), and amending Directive 2003/87/EC and Regulations (EU) 2021/1058, (EU) 2021/1056, (EU) 2021/1057, (EU) No 1303/2013, (EU) No 223/2014, (EU) 2021/1060, (EU) 2021/523, (EU) 2021/695, (EU) 2021/697 and (EU) 2021/241, OJ L, 2024/795, 29.2.2024, ELI:  http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/795/oj .

(178)

https://strategic-technologies.europa.eu/index_en

(179)

  Regulation - EU - 2024/795 - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu) , Article 2(1), point (a) of the STEP Regulation

(180)

Guidance Note concerning certain provisions of Regulation (EU) 2024/795 establishing the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP). C(2025)3148 of 8 May 2024.

(181)

Including those contributing to the targets and objectives of the Digital Decade Policy Programme 2030, multi-country projects as defined in Article 2(2) of Decision (EU) 2022/2481

(182)

The pre-commitment is non-legally binding in nature and will be assessed at the time of proposal evaluation.

(183)

In case the pre-committed investor is not the lead investor, then the EIC Fund investment will be subject to the participation of the qualified lead investor as defined in the EIC Investment Guidelines available on the EIC website.

(184)

 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509

(185)

i.e., the legal entities which sign the investment agreement and, on this basis, become investees respectively.

(186)

Amounts for 2026 and 2027 are subject to the availability of the appropriations provided for in the general budget of the Union for 2026 and 2027 following the adoption of that budget of the EIC Work Programmes for 2026 and 2027.

(187)

If applicants have been selected for funding under the Accelerator Open call. Otherwise, any remaining amounts may be allocated to other calls within the general flexibility of the Work Programme.

(188)

Applicants wishing to apply for lower investment amounts may apply to the EIC Accelerator call.

(189)

As STEP Seal beneficiary, you might be requested to provide additional documentation for the sake of an Ownership and Control Assessment where there is such requirement.

(190)

  InvestEU Implementing partners - European Union (europa.eu)

(191)

As STEP Seal beneficiary, you might be requested to provide additional documentation for the sake of an Ownership and Control Assessment where there is such requirement.

(192)

A Pre-Accelerator call is envisaged to be launched in 2025 under the Horizon Europe widening work programme (WIDERA), and subject to decisions taken for this work programme.

(193)

The detailed eligibility is described in the EIC WP2023, action V.1.2. Financial Support to access services from Ecosystem Partners.

(194)

 In certain cases (e.g., available places, etc.) eligibility for Tech2Market BAS may be extended to Horizon Europe beneficiaries eligible to apply to EIC Transition. Pathfinder and Transition beneficiaries will have priority. 

(195)

 The EIC will also seek operational synergies with Enterprise Europe Network, national and regional clusters, the European IP Helpdesk, Start-up Europe, EIT KICs, national innovation agencies and the National Contact Points networks. 

(196)

Applicants are encouraged to use the EIC coaching services. It is nevertheless up to the applicants to decide if and when to use the coaching services.

(197)

Coaching involving travel may take place in duly justified cases when the physical presence of the coach is expected to bring significantly better results, mainly for coaching to EIC awardees. Coaching 2025 budget may also be used for the Horizon 2020 EIC legacy projects.

(198)

 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509

(199)

https://eic.ec.europa.eu/news/eic-fund-topping-charts-2023-09-06_en

(200)

  Gender equality in research and innovation (europa.eu)

(201)

See Flagship 4: Fostering, attracting and retaining deep tech talent : The New European Innovation Agenda (europa.eu)

(202)

 The applicant must apply as a natural person and not as a legal entity

(203)

 This Prize celebrates women in all their diversity. The word 'woman' equates to a cis woman, or a transgender woman who is legally defined as a woman.

(204)

 A natural person is legally residing in a given country, if she is recognised as a resident under national law in that country, and proof of such recognition can be provided upon request.

(205)

 A co-founder is somebody who has started the company (i.e. "founded" the company) with at least one other person, and proof of this can be provided upon request.

(206)

Self-employment is not acceptable.

(207)

 The company or organisation is formed and registered with the appropriate statutory authority of the country as a 'company or corporation', and proof can be provided upon request.

(208)

 The company must be registered or incorporated before 1 January 2023.

(209)

Those applying for the Rising Innovator category must be born on or after 1 January 1990.

(210)

  eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52022DC0332

(211)

A city is a Local Administrative Unit or a group of Local Administrative Units where a majority of the population lives in an urban centre of at least 50 000 inhabitants. Local Administrative Units and their respective population figures should be those set out in the latest available validated or partially validated LAU correspondence table published by Eurostat ( Local administrative units (LAU) - Eurostat (europa.eu) ) at the time of the submission of the application. Local authorities may represent one city defined as a Local Administrative Unit, or a “greater city” or Metropolitan region, taking account of Functional Urban Areas when relevant. Legal entities with separate legal personality from cities, even if founded and funded by the cities, are not eligible to apply.

(212)

Declaration of intent would be a voluntary document containing detailed information about the use of the iCapital brand, the organization and participation of events such as the opening and / or award ceremonies, info days, or the knowledge sharing with other cities, among other actions.

(213)

Commission Decision C(2007) 5858 of 21 November 2007 on the reimbursement rules of expenses incurred by people from outside the Commission invited to attend meetings in an expert capacity.

(214)

As requested in Commission Decision C(2016) 3301 final

(215)

Including projects financed by the EIC pilot, SME instrument, Fast Track to Innovation, FET Open and FET Proactive under Horizon 2020.

(216)

Necessary to implement Horizon Europe regulation Article 48.12

(217)

  Commission Decision C(2007)5858

(218)

The code developed to implement the IT components should be released in open source under code.europa.eu

(219)

 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509

(220)

 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509

(221)

 As determined in the decision authorising the use of   financing not linked to costs for the Women TechEU actions under the   Horizon Europe Programme (2021-2027).

(222)

 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509

(223)

The Horizon Europe Programme Guide outlines the detailed guidance on the structure, budget and political priorities of Horizon Europe.

(224)

The Online Manual outlines the procedures to register and submit applications online via the EU Funding & Tenders Portal and recommendations on preparing the application.

(225)

The AGA — Annotated Grant Agreement contains detailed annotations on all the provisions in the grant agreement that must be signed to obtain the grant.

(226)

 The budgets set out in the calls / Actions are indicative. Unless otherwise stated, final budgets may change following evaluation. The final figures may change by up to 20% compared to the total budget indicated in this Work Programme. Changes within these limits will not be considered substantial within the meaning of Article 110(5) of EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 .

(227)

The Accelerator is a continuously open call and hence this amount may be increased by any amounts committed but not allocated under the cut-offs of the previous EIC annual Work Programme as well as amounts from divestments. The share of the budget dedicated to investments (e.g., equity, equity-like, debt/guarantees, etc.) and grants will be a result of the evaluation and due diligence process for applications to the EIC Accelerator. In case the full budget allocated for investments in year N will not be committed fully in year N+1 at the latest, the unused budget may be reallocated to subsequent EIC Accelerator calls.

(228)

 The EIC Fund will receive an annual amount from the EIC Work Programme budget to cover administrative expenses and fees. This administrative budget covers the operation and administration expenses of any investment. These costs include any cost in relation to the acquisition, ownership or realisation of the investments. The administrative budget covers, among others, the fees payable to the EIC Fund Manager, other service providers, advisory, compensations to external experts, depositary and administrative agent fees, accounting, auditors, compliance procedures, communication and marketing, litigation or arbitration, statutory or regulatory fees, insurance premiums, taxes and other governmental charges and any other operational and administration costs and expenses as required. This budget will in average not exceed 10 % of the budget transferred for investments purposes. The indicative budget under indirect management is expected to be around EUR 729 million.

(229)

 Amounts from EIC Accelerator calls, including amounts decommitted from proposals awarded funding under the Accelerator calls as well as amounts from divestments, may be used, within the same budgetary year, either for i) follow-on investments under the provisions set out in Horizon Europe Regulation Article 48(12), second subparagraph, and/or ii) for providing an equity component to grant-first beneficiaries, including for actions selected under Accelerator calls from previous years. Such investments will be subject to an award decision and to the provision of information to the EIC and EIE Programme Committee.

(230)

This reserve is to provide: i) additional amounts for follow-on investments under the provisions set out in Horizon Europe Regulation Article 48(12), second subparagraph, including for actions selected under Accelerator calls from previous years; and/or ii) an equity component to grant-first beneficiaries selected under the EIC Work Programmes 2021 to 2023. Such investments will be subject to an award decision and to the provision of information to the EIC and EIE Programme Committee. The amounts needed for such additional financing will be reviewed on a regular basis during the year and any unused amounts re-allocated to EIC calls within the flexibility of the amounts set out in this Work Programme.

(231)

The Horizon Europe Programme Guide outlines the detailed guidance on the structure, budget and political priorities of Horizon Europe.

(232)

The Online Manual outlines the procedures to register and submit applications online via the EU Funding & Tenders Portal and recommendations on preparing the application.

(233)

The AGA — Annotated Grant Agreement contains detailed annotations on all the provisions in the grant agreement that must be signed to obtain the grant.

(234)

Ongoing grant-only projects selected under a Horizon 2020 EIC pilot Accelerator or under Horizon Europe EIC Accelerator call may be eligible to submit a proposal for a blended finance or an investment only support under an EIC Accelerator call.

Ongoing blended finance projects selected under a Horizon 2020 EIC pilot Accelerator call may be eligible to submit a proposal for a related investment component under an EIC Accelerator call.

(235)

 For the definition of ‘legal entity’, see Article 2 (16) Regulation (EU) 2021/695 as well as Article 203(2)(c) , EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509  .

(236)

International European research organisation means an international organisation, the majority of whose members are Member States or Associated Countries, and whose principal objective is to promote scientific and technological cooperation in Europe (Article 2 (15) Regulation (EU) 2021/695).

(237)

Regulation (EU) 2021/695 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 April 2021 establishing Horizon Europe (OJ L 170 , 12.5.2021, p. 1).

(238)

  Regulation - 2021/695 - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu)  

(239)

 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 .

(240)

 Article 190 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 .

(241)

 Article 200(2)(c) EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 .

(242)

 Articles 201(2) and 200(2)(c) EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 .

(243)

European Council conclusions of 1 and 2 October 2020 (EUCO 13/20), point 11; Council Conclusions on the significance of 5G to the European Economy and the need to mitigate security risks linked to 5G, 14517/19.

(244)

Commission Recommendation (EU) 2019/534 of 26 March 2019 Cybersecurity of 5G networks, L 88/42.

(245)

NIS Cooperation Group, Report on EU coordinated risk assessment of the cybersecurity of 5G networks, 9 October 2019.

(246)

NIS Cooperation Group, EU Toolbox on 5G Cybersecurity, 29 January 2020.

(247)

NIS Cooperation Group, Second report on Member States’ progress in implementing the EU Toolbox on 5G Cybersecurity, June 2023.

(248)

Communication from the Commission: Implementation of the 5g cybersecurity Toolbox, Brussels, 15.6.2023 C(2023) 4049 final.

(249)

Within the NIS framework NIS 1 + 2 [Directive - 2022/2555 - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu)]

(250)

NIS Cooperation Group, Second report on Member States’ progress in implementing the EU Toolbox on 5G Cybersecurity, June 2023.

(251)

Communication from the Commission: Implementation of the 5G cybersecurity Toolbox, Brussels, 15.6.2023 C(2023) 4049 final.

(252)

 Please note that the EU Official Journal contains the official list and, in case of conflict, its content prevails over that of the EU Sanctions Map .

(253)

 Please note that the EU Official Journal contains the official list and, in case of conflict, its content prevails over that of the EU Sanctions Map .

(254)

 Commission guidelines No 2013/C 205/05 on the eligibility of Israeli entities and their activities in the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967 for grants, prizes and financial instruments funded by the EU from 2014 onwards (OJEU C 205 of 19.07.2013, pp. 9-11).

(255)

  Regulation - 2021/695 - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu)

(256)

i.e., the legal entities which sign the grant agreement and/or the investment agreement and, on this basis, become beneficiaries of grants and/or investees respectively.

(257)

Entities from Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) are eligible for funding under the same conditions as entities from the Member States to which the OCT in question is linked. See the Horizon Europe Programme Guide for a complete list of OCTs.

(258)

 The list is correct at the time of adoption of this Work Programme. Please see the Horizon Europe List of Participating Countries on the Portal for up-to-date information on the current list and on the position for Associated Countries.

(259)

This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244/1999 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.

(260)

The United Kingdom is associated to the entire Horizon Europe Programme, with the only exception of the investment component of the EIC Accelerator managed by the EIC fund

(261)

The list is correct at the time of adoption of this Work Programme. See the Horizon Europe List of Participating Countrie s   https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/programme-guide_horizon_en.pdf on the Portal for a up-to-date list of these countries.

(262)

This designation shall not be construed as recognition of a State of Palestine and is without prejudice to the individual positions of the Member States on this issue.

(263)

Consortia of two entities must be comprised of independent legal entities from two different Member States or Associated Countries. Consortia of three or above entities follow standard rules i.e. they must include at least one legal entity established in a Member State and at least two other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries (see Annex 2).

(264)

  Regulation - 2020/852 - EN - taxonomy regulation - EUR-Lex (europa.eu)

(265)

 See Commission Decision 2015/444/EU, Euratom of 13 March 2015 on the security rules for protecting EU classified information (OJ L 72, 17.3.2015, p. 53.

(266)

 Article 138, EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 .

(267)

 Article 138 and 143, EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509

(268)

Council Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 2988/95 of 18 December 1995 on the protection of the European Communities financial interests, (OJ L 312, 23.12.1995, p. 1).

(269)

 Article 143 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509

(270)

  https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/funding/funding-opportunities/seal-excellence_en .

(271)

  Sovereignty seal - European Commission (europa.eu)

(272)

 Article 196 EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 .

(273)

For previous beneficiaries of a grant, the Fast Track scheme cannot be used to request grant-only support.

(274)

From the Directorate General in charge and/or Executive Agency to which the tasks/programme will be delegated.

(275)

Article 198(e) EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 .

(276)

This includes affiliated entities that are participating in the Pathfinder or Transition projects.

(277)

In accordance with Recital (85) and notably the second indent of Article 39(1) of Horizon Europe Regulation.

(278)

Results’ means any tangible or intangible effect of the action, such as data, know-how or information, whatever its form or nature, whether or not it can be protected, as well as any rights attached to it, including intellectual property rights.