Insights

Making a greener and more digital Europe is one of the biggest challenges for our generation. The Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) is a new funding programme from the European Union, which focuses to strategically fund the development and acceleration of European digital technologies to businesses, citizens and public administrations and support the recovery of the economy from the pandemic. With the opened and upcoming calls for proposals, that release the budget of 7.6 B€, there will be remarkable growth opportunities to small and mid-sized enterprises working on digital technologies as well as to organisations providing key technological capabilities and services.

Is your company on a mission to reduce carbon emissions to fight climate change? To become climate neutral by 2050, Europe has to take drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To support this ambitious goal, European Commission has launched an Innovation Fund programme to fund both large-scale and small-scale projects that demonstrate low-carbon technologies. Read on to find out if your SME company or a consortium you are part of is eligible to have your fair share of the 10 B€ available through this massive funding programme over the period of 2020-2030 — the next small-scale call is approaching early next year!

As the annual cycle soon closes, October Q4 opened a new and continuous wave of EU funding calls. Many organizations might be focusing on reporting of the current year, but don’t forget this is also the time to build the next year’s strategy and work plans considering some funding deadlines can spawn into Spring 2022.

The European Commission has adopted its legislative proposal for a strategic European partnership on Smart Networks and Services as a Joint Undertaking, with a public R&I investment of 900 M€ over the new long-term budget period 2021-2027. The Joint Undertaking will coordinate research activities on 6G technology under Horizon Europe and 5G deployment initiatives under the Connecting Europe Facility Digital and other programmes.

We discussed with Patrick Halford who leads our Digital Industries team about the research activities around Artificial Intelligence (AI). Keeping up with the many overlapping technologies under the umbrella of what is commonly known as artificial intelligence as they ride their respective cost/performance improvement curves is no easy feat. It is, however, an essential element of Spinverse’s business model as we strive to help our clients from across all industries and organization types capitalise on converging technologies to secure R&D&I funding and build out new value chains. 

The aim of the health cluster in Horizon Europe framework program is to improve and protect the health and wellbeing of citizens of all ages by generating new knowledge and developing innovative solutions to prevent, diagnose, monitor, treat and cure diseases. The aim is also to support and enable patients' participation and self-management. 

The LIFE programme dating back to 1992 is the only European Union fund entirely dedicated to environmental and climate objectives. A recent provisional agreement to raise the budget of the programme to more than 5.48 B€ for 2021-2027 offers growth opportunities to basically anyone registered in the EU to apply for LIFE funding: public bodies, companies, and NGOs, including growth companies. The first LIFE call for proposals has just opened and this is the time to act! 

Business Finland has recently opened several funding calls to boost the renewal and competitiveness of Finnish industries operating in the areas of sustainability. The funding, worth a total of 150 - 170 M€ in the course of 2021-2023 for sustainable innovation projects meant to accelerate sustainable growth, is a part of the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). This autumn, there are three interesting calls focused to support the EU targets of sustainable growth.

The Eurostars funding instrument is making a comeback with a wider scope, thus offering growth opportunities to a wider group of applying companies and organisations. This time around, not only R&D-performing SMEs, larger companies, research organisations and universities will be eligible to apply for Eurostars funding, but innovative SMEs are also welcome to send in their application as the company to lead an EU funded project with its partners. Get ready, as the first call of the new Eurostars programme will open soon and it is time to act now!  

European Defence Fund (EDF) is the European Commission's initiative to support collaborative defence research and development, and to foster an innovative and competitive defence industrial base. The extensive fund offers remarkable growth and collaboration opportunities to defence industries throughout Europe.