Eurostars call for projects SEP 2023

The amount of funding your organisation receives when you participate in a project is managed by your national funding body. Funding rules vary from country to country and your national funding body decides:

• which organisations can receive funding,
• which project activities can be funded and
• funding rates.

If you are from a Eurostars country, you can discover what funding is available for your organisation on our country-specific pages and contact your national or regional funding body using our contact form. Your national funding body may have maximum funding amount per project or project partner.

Organisations from non-Eurostars countries can participate by self-funding their project costs.

To apply, you must fulfil seven eligibility criteria:

• The project consortium is led by an innovative SME* from a Eurostars country**.
• The project consortium is composed of at least two entities that are independent of one another.
• The project consortium is composed of entities from at least two Eurostars countries with at least one organisation coming from an EU or Horizon Europe Associated Country ***.
• The budget of the SMEs from the participating countries (excluding any subcontracting) is 50% or more of the total project cost.
• No single participant or country is responsible for more than 70% of the budget of the project.
• The project duration is 36 months or less****.
• The project has an exclusive focus on civil applications.

*We define an innovative SME as any SMEs with the ambition to collaborate on R&D and innovation with international partners to develop new products, processes and services for European and global markets. Innovative SMEs do not need to have a proven track record of R&D activities.

R&D: “Research and experimental development (R&D) comprise creative and systematic work undertaken in order to increase the stock of knowledge – including knowledge of humankind, culture and society – and to devise new applications of available knowledge.” (OECD Frascati Manual 2015, p. 44)

Innovation: “a new or improved product or process (or combination thereof) that differs significantly from the unit’s previous products or processes and that has been made available to potential users (product) or brought into use by the unit (process).” (OECD Oslo Manual 2018, p. 20)

**Eurostars countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, and the United Kingdom.

***Eurostars countries which are not an EU member state or a Horizon Europe Associated Country: Canada, South Korea, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. For this current call, the United Kingdom continues to be considered a third country, and not an EU member state or a Horizon Europe Associated Country.

The United Kingdom and European Commission reached political agreement on 7 September 2023 on the UK’s association to Horizon Europe. In agreement with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and Innovate UK, within this current Eurostars-3 call (closing September 2023), there are no changes to existing eligibility requirements relating to the United Kingdom. United Kingdom participants within eligible consortia continue to be able to participate in the programme and receive national funding.

****If justified, you may be permitted an extension after your project has started. This request will undergo an evaluation to determine whether the extension of the project is duly justified by the participants. It must be approved by the Eureka Secretariat and the relevant national funding bodies.

Please read all our guidelines before submitting a project application. If you do not meet all our eligibility criteria, your application will be rejected.

Applying to Eurostars is designed to be quick and simple. In your application, you can tell us more about your organisation and the innovative new product, process or service you plan to develop.

1. Contact your national or regional funding body using the form available on our website to discuss your project idea, funding in your country, legal and financial viability and eligibility.
2. Create an account on our project platform to open a new application. The innovative SME leading your consortium must open your application and invite the other partners to collaborate on the online application form.
3. On the platform, complete the application form (in English) and submit it electronically. The portal allows you to save, revisit and edit your application form before you submit it, giving you time to confirm all information is correct.
4. Upload annexes by attaching them to your online application form. You must complete and upload:

• a signed commitment and signature form,
• (if you are an SME) an SME declaration.

Depending on what country you are based in, you may need to add a financial annex:

• financial reports,
• (if you are a start-up) a business plan,
• other.

Contact your national funding body to discuss which documents you need to provide. If you are an organisation that is 100% publicly funded, you will not have to provide a financial annex.

You can also include annexes to support your project application:

• a technical annex (related to the project),
• a Gantt chart.

5. Submit your completed application form before the deadline.

For detailed information about applying to our Eurostars programme, read our guidelines.

Please note: Your national or regional funding body may need you to complete additional steps to apply to Eurostars. If you do not provide the information required by your national or regional funding body, you may render yourself ineligible to receive public funding.

Eurostars has a centralised and transparent evaluation for selecting projects to receive funding.

Independent evaluators will score your project application against three criteria and their sub-criteria:

1. Quality and efficiency of the implementation

• Quality of the consortium
• Added value through cooperation
• Realistic and clearly defined project management and planning
• Reasonable cost structure

2. Impact

• Market size
• Market access and risk
• Competitive advantage
• Clear and realistic commercialisation plans
• Economic, environmental, and societal impact

3. Excellence

• Degree of innovation
• New applied knowledge
• Level of technical challenge
• Technical achievability and risk

4. Results are communicated at each step:

• Eligibility check (within one week of 14 September 2023)
• Legal and financial viability check (late October 2023)
• Expert evaluation conducted by three independent experts per project (late October 2023)
• Independent Evaluation Panel and ranking of project applications (early December 2023)
• Ethics review (early December 2023)

5. Applications are considered for funding if:

• They are among the best 200 projects evaluated by the remote experts which progress to the Independent Evaluation Panel.
• All project partners receive a positive Legal and Financial Viability outcome.
• The Independent Evaluation Panel considered the projects to be excellent or good quality.

Learn more about our evaluation and monitoring process on our website.

We will communicate whether your project will be able to receive funding by mid-December 2023 and the objective is that agreements with your national funding body are signed between five and seven months after the submission deadline.

If your project application was rejected and you believe this was due to a procedural mistake during the eligibility check, the legal and financial viability check or the evaluation of your application, the consortium leader can submit a redress request. A redress request can only be based on procedural grounds, with clear evidence of the reasons for complaint.

Eurostars call for projects text September 2023.pdf