Other EU funding opportunities
In Horizon Europe, there are many other funding opportunities and support services available for the research and innovation community beyond the regular calls for proposals in the respective work programme. This page summarises the most important ones for you.
Institutionalised Partnerships / Joint Undertakings
There are several types of European Partnerships in Horizon Europe. One type of partnership is the so-called joint undertaking (JU). There are currently three active JUs in Horizon Europe Cluster 4 and each of them has its own work programme with calls for proposals:
- Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU) and its predecessor (KDT)
- Smart Networks and Services (SNS JU)
- High Performance Computing (HPC JU)
Other Horizon Europe Partnerships and/or ERA-NETS
- Coordinating National and Regional Funding for the Future and Emerging Technologies Flagships (FLAG-ERA)
- Emerging Information and Communication Technologies (CHIST-ERA)
- Coordinating National Research in Quantum Technologies (QuantERA)
- Calls from Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP, see guidelines here), sometimes called "cascading grants" in Horizon Europe projects (competitive calls)
Public-Public Partnerships by several Member States
- Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI)
- European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (EDICs)
- Other EU programmess addressing digital
Digital Innovation Hubs
Digital innovation hubs are ecosystems that consist of SMEs, large industries, startups, researchers, accelerators, and investors. They aim to create the best conditions for long-term business success for all involved. Around 60% of large industries and more than 90% of SME feel lagging behind in digital innovation. Similarly, there are strong digitalisation discrepancies between industrial sectors. Digital innovation hubs can help ensure that every company, small or large, high-tech or not, can grasp the digital opportunities. There are already several initiatives of the EC to shape the pan-European network of DIHs with the focus on helping SMEs to master their digital transformation.
Financial Support to Third Parties / Cascading Grants
Some of the calls for proposals in Horizon Europe specify that consortia are expected to reserve a certain amount of their budget for so-called Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP). This portion of the budget must be distributed to third-party organisations via grants, the idea being that these third parties should contribute to the project's expected outcomes through their grants while not actually being part of the consortium. This is a good way of including for example start-ups and SMEs in the EU projects ecosystem without them having to be full project beneficiaries with all the associated paper work.
The EC has published a guidance document on FSTP which we recommend to read for orientation, no matter whether you are a project beneficiary handling FSTP or interested in applying for FSTP grants yourself.
Where to find FSTP opportunities
Finding FSTP opportunities is not always easy. Some EU projects publish their FSTP calls on the Funding & Tenders Portal, while others have beneficiaries like who are specialised on running FSTP calls and publish these on their own portals. Some others publish FSTP calls only on their project website. Portals you can check regularly yourself include:
- The Funding & Tenders Portal
- The Cascade Funding Hub
- The OnePass portal
- The F6S portal
Ongoing initiatives regularly offering financial support for third parties
- Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU)
- Next Generation Internet (NGI)
- EU Cloud Edge IoT (CEI)
- European Institute of Innovation & Technologu (EIT) Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC)
- AI on-demand platform (AI4EU)
- Quantum Flagship (QT)
Past initiatives
Do you want to learn about previous initiatives and results of cascading grants?
- Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs (I4MS)
- Smart Anything Everywhere (SAE)
- Open Data Incubator Europe (ODINE)
- European Data Incubator (EDI)
- European Coordination Hub for Open Robotics Development (ECHORD++),
- Access Center for Photonics Innovation Solutions and Technology Support (ACTPHAST),
- Supercomputing Exercise for SMEs (SESAME NET)