Horizon Europe’s 2023-2024 widening calls are now open for applications. With “Horizon Europe Widening”, the European Commission aims at strengthening and widening participation in the programme from countries at a disadvantage in R&I, for instance, lacking infrastructure, funding and the possibility to create strong networks and retain talents. Widening Participation and Spreading Excellence actions under Horizon Europe, contribute to building research and innovation capacity for countries lagging behind. They will strengthen their potential for successful participation in transnational research and innovation processes, promote networking and access to excellence.
Among the many possibilities offered by the WIDERA actions, we would like to draw your attention to the Hop-on Facility. It allows research institutions from Widening countries to join already ongoing research and innovation actions under Horizon Europe Pillar 2 and EIC Pathfinder. In other words, a new Partner is added to an already existing Consortium to enhance the capacity of the initiative to reach its objectives. The rationale is to mobilise excellence in Widening countries, increase visibility of the participants, improve knowledge circulation, and reduce lack of participation. Moreover, it aims to enlarge the outreach of the participants’ R&I actions and provide access to new talent pools, and ultimately allow beneficiary institutions with new competencies and skills for working in transnational projects, including research management and dissemination and exploitation are acquired.
Main selection criteria are excellence and added value of the new partner performing a relevant additional task in the project. All consortium partners need to agree on the accession of the new partner whereas the R&I relevance and complementarity needs to be demonstrated.
The scheme aims at achieving the Inclusiveness ambition of the future ERA policy by involving research institutions from widening countries. Participants in the programme will be able to upgrade their research and innovation systems, making them stronger and allowing the EU as a whole to advance together, in line with the policy objectives of the European Research Area.
The list of widening countries is comprised of 15 member states (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) and all outermost regions, as well as all associated countries with equivalent characteristics in terms of R&I performance (Albania, Armenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, the Faroe Islands, Georgia, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Morocco).
The list of projects open to Hop-on Facility is available here.
Deadline for applying is 26 September 2024 17:00:00 Brussels time.
UNIMED is at your disposal shall you need support to submit your proposal.
