Call for proposals - ACP-EU Energy Facility II - Energy and Fragility

Deadline 14th February 2014  

The Global objective of this Call for Proposals is to contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) on poverty alleviation, as well as of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) objectives on energy, while helping to fight against climate change. The Specific objective of this Call for Proposals is to increase and improve access to modern, affordable and sustainable energy services for rural and peri-urban poor by focusing on renewable energy solutions as well as on energy efficiency measures.

1. Reduce Fragility, Post-conflict recovery: actions iwill specifically target areas affected by post-conflicts impacts and/or natural hazards (such as droughts, floods, etc.) impacts. Will be considered for funding only actions providing access to energy services to not less than 10,000 people by the end of the project duration whilst priority will be given to projects demonstrating higher efficiency through providing access to a higher number of people. 

2. Geographical Focus: concentrate on the target group, i.e. poor people living in scattered settlements, villages, rural areas of the following target countries: Burundi, Central African Republic, Liberia, Mali and Somalia. 

3. Ownership: anchor ownership of a project to the beneficiary and to ensure the coherence and alignment of the project with Local, National or Regional Development Plans and other sector-specific, poverty reduction and energy-related policies. 

Budget € 15,000,000. The initial planned duration of an action shall not exceed 48 months.

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Competitive Call for additional beneficiaries

Call deadline: 6 November 2013 

The Human Brain Project (HBP) is a ten-year, large-scale European research initiative whose goal is to understand the human brain and its diseases and ultimately to emulate its computational capabilities. The ramp-up phase of the project (October 2013 to March 2016) has received €54M of funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme. HBP has reserved a portion of its ramp-up phase funding for specific tasks to be carried out by new beneficiaries who will join the consortium in 2014. 

These new beneficiaries will be selected from proposals submitted in response to this Competitive Call. The project will only consider proposals for research. Other kinds of activity will not be funded. 

Call topics 

1 - Human and mouse neural channelomics and receptomics 

2 - Genotype to phenotype mapping of the mouse brain 

3 - Identifying, gathering and organizing multimodal human and nonhuman neuroscience data 

4 - Cognitive architectures 

5 - Novel methods for rule-based clustering of medical data 

6 - Neural configurations for neuromorphic computing systems 

7 - Virtual robotic environments, agents, sensory & motor systems 

8 - Theory of multiscale circuits 

The following are eligible to participate in the HBP Competitive Call: any legal entity established in an EU Member State or an associated country or created under EU law; any international European interest organisation; any legal entity established in an FP7 international cooperation partner countries (ICPC). International organisations, other than an international European interest organisation, or a legal entity established in a third country other than an associated country or international cooperation partner country may also participate but without EU funding.

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Med Programme: Call for Proposals on Integrated Maritime Approach

Deadline: 10 January 2014 

The call shall be targeting four priorities, namely: 

 1) Maritime Innovation and economic development, 

 2) Environment protection, 

 3) Transport and accessibility

 4) Governance and policy response. 

With respect to the first 3 priorities, partners should either have experience within previous Med projects or other European cooperation projects. 

Priority 4, on the other hand, is only open to national and local authorities and previous participation in Med or EU funded projects is not necessary. 

The total budget for this call amounts to EUR 5 million.

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SMEs in Horizon 2020

Horizon 2020 aims to enhance the participation of SMEs (also micro-SMEs), addressing all forms of R&D and types of innovation (non-technological and service innovations), towards exploitation and commercialization. SMEs should get access to international networks, new markets and customers and qualified staff. Better conditions for SME participation are envisaged. 

The concept of SMEs in Horizon 2020: Whereas mainstreaming SME support is offered via the new SME instrument that will be implemented in the societal challenges as well as in the enabling and industrial technologies, specific support is provided via different measures. Research intensive SMEs are tackled by Eurostars 2 (Article 185 initiative), targeting market oriented innovation of R&D performing SMEs with a bottom-up approach. 

The innovation capacity of SMEs will be enhanced by awareness raising, information and dissemination training and mobility activities, networking and exchange of best practice. In addition, specialised innovation support on IP-exploitation, networks of procurers, tech transfer offices and strategy design is completing this specific support. 

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FI-CONTENT 2 OPEN CALL FOR ADDITIONAL BENEFICIARIES

Deadline: 8th January 2014

The FI-CONTENT 2 project, currently active in the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research and technological development, announces its Open Call for new beneficiaries. FI-CONTENT 2 is part of the Future Internet PPP (FI-PPP) program, a joint action by European Industry and the European Commission.

The FI-CONTENT 2 project aims at establishing the foundation of a European infrastructure for promoting and testing novel uses of audio-visual content on connected devices. The partners will develop and deploy advanced platforms for Social Connected TV, Mobile Smart City services, and Pervasive Games. To assess the approach and improve these platforms, user communities in 6 European locations will be activated for living lab and field trials. 

The objective of the open call is to recruit around five to ten new content usage driven partners to complement the three platforms that the FI-CONTENT 2 project is building, by creating new applications or providing missing technologies to extend the platforms' capabilities. It is expected that the new partners will contribute to one or more of the following topics: 

Social Connected TV Platform
• Device Discovery,
• Cross-Device Communication,
• Interactive Content and Services,
• Service and Platform APIs,

• Search and Discovery;

Smart City Services Platform:

• Real-time Translation of text and audio of any Smart City Guide Content,

• Word Spotting / Summarization of Smart City Guide Content,

• Service Continuity / Complementarities Between Devices,

• Rich-Media Ad-Insertion,

• Platform Enrichment (Data and Content);

Pervasive Gaming Platform

• Augmented Reality Tracking,

• Reality Mixer,

• Games with Things,

• Content Creation and Integration,

• Game Social Platform.

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) will be managed according to the corresponding Grant Agreement, Consortium Agreement and Collaboration Agreement, which the new partners shall adhere to.

Expected duration of participation in project: beginning of April 2014 to end of March 2015 (12 months)

Total EC funding available for new partners: up to 1.35 Million Euro 

Number of new partners to be selected: around 5 to 10

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Progress Call for proposals for social policy experimentations supporting social investments

Deadline for submitting proposals: 16/12/2013 

This call focuses on methodological aspects of the different phases of social policy innovations, policy reforms or policy adaptations. Social policy experimentation within this call should aim at measuring the impact of a relevant social policy intervention and be based on a sound methodology. The scope is to attract proposals designing social policy interventions in line with the social investment package which contains three policy reform strands to help member states adapt their social protection systems to the societal challenges. 

These include: 

• activating and enabling benefits and services to support people’s inclusion in society and the labour market; • social protection systems to respond to people’s needs throughout their lives; 

 •effective and efficient spending to ensure adequate and sustainable social protection. 

Applicants must be established in the EU, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey or Serbia. 

Proposals must be submitted by a consortium of stakeholders involved in the process of social policy innovation. The lead applicant must be a public authority at central, regional or lovel level or bodies governed by public law. Co-applicants must be public authorities, bodies governed by public law, civil society organisations or private sector organisations. It is encouraged to include academic structures. 

The budget for this call is €3.5 million. 

Grants are worth between €700,000 and €1 million covering up to 80%of eligible costs for a period between 24 to 36 months.

Detailed newsletter

Preparatory action - Supporting the demand and supply side of the market for social enterprise finance

Deadline for submitting of proposals: 15 November 2013.

The objective of the preparatory action is to identify, develop, promote and disseminate the good practice of national, regional or local governments and of financial intermediaries in assisting young social entrepreneurs at times of high youth unemployment. 

Strand A: Establishment of social finance partnerships

This strand is particularly relevant for actions in countries in which the social finance market is not developed yet. It aims at addressing situations in which no suitable social finance instrument is in place, with a lack of investors prepared to launch or participate in a financial instrument.

Strand B: Establishment of social finance instruments and mechanisms 

This strand is particularly relevant for actions in countries with a relatively low level of development of the social finance market. It aims at addressing situations in which there is no suitable social finance instrument in place and potential investors and intermediaries lack expertise that can guide the drafting of contractual agreements needed for setting up a financial instrument. 

 Strand C: Establishment of collaborative funding models for social enterprises 

This strand is particularly relevant for actions in countries in which different types of actors are already operating in the social finance market, but in isolation. As a result, these different types of social finance providers (foundations, social investors, public authorities, notably ESF managing authorities) apply a broad range of incoherent and unrelated eligibility criteria return expectations, conditions for repayment, requirements for accounting and reporting etc. 

Strand D: Development of investment readiness support for social enterprises 

This strand addresses the insufficient investment-readiness of social enterprises. Even in countries where there is a large pool of capital willing to invest in social enterprises, investments often remain complicated as social enterprises are not "investment ready". This can be explained sometimes by their low interest in repayable financial instruments due to an orientation towards the so-called grant economy, but also by a lack of necessary documents such as impact reports or business plans and insufficient experience in making proposals for external financing, or for combining different sources and types of finance (e.g. grants/loans 

For all strands, the focus should be on social ventures that aim at social impact, are financially sustainable, want to scale up (including through franchise) and, for that purpose, want to raise between EUR 100 000 and EUR 500 000. 

The total budget: EUR 1 million. The EU grant is limited to a maximum co-funding rate of 80% of the total eligible costs.

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URBACT Call for Proposals for the Creation of Pilot Networks

Deadline 04 November 2013

URBACT Call for proposals is now open for the creation of up to 4 Pilot Networks for the transfer of good practice in the field of integrated and sustainable urban development.

In URBACT II, the focus of exchange networks has been on fostering integrated and participative approaches to urban policies through sharing experience and practices, and improving local policies (production of Local Action Plans). The full chain of identification, transfer and validation of "good practices" in the field of urban policies has barely been explored. It is proposed to experiment this "capitalisation of good practices" process with small scale pilot projects under the current programme so as to explore tools and processes to be embedded in URBACT III. T

The pilot Transfer Networks shall aim to: 

1. Support the validation of good practices through the transfer (re-use) by cities in the framework of a transnational exchange and learning project. 

2. Identify key elements of success for the transfer of the selected practices 

 3. Explore how transnational cooperation can support the identification, validation, dissemination and active in-take of good practices in the field of integrated sustainable urban development (in the perspective of the URBACT III programme, with a focus on the EU2020 objectives).

More generally, these pilot Transfer networks shall allow the programme to explore how URBACT III could, building on transnational cooperation, foster and support the mapping, re-use and validation of good practices. 

The budget of the Pilot Transfer Networks will range from 250.000 to 400.000 EUR depending on the number of partners involved. Cities will need to consider their financial contribution to the project as co-financing is fixed at a maximum of 70% for competitiveness regions and 80% for convergences regions 

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XIFI Competitive Call for additional Project Partners

Submission deadline: 27 November 2013 

XIFI (eXperimental Infrastructures for the Future Internet), a project currently active in the Seventh Framework programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities contributing to the creation of the European research area and to innovation (2007-2013) requires the participation of new partners to carry out certain tasks within the project. In particular the tasks pertain to the expansion of the infrastructure nodes of the FI-PPP capacity by the involvement of providers and operators of additional infrastructures at locations considering the requirements of the early trial projects of the FI-PPP. 

Maximum budget available for new beneficiaries 2,170,000 € 

Maximum funding request per proposal 200,000 € 

The major objective of XIFI with this Open Call is to enlarge the infrastructure capacity of the FI-PPP by additional nodes aiming at achieving: 

• Balanced geographical distribution of infrastructures across Europe
• Increased heterogeneity of infrastructures and diversity of service capabilities 
• Greater diversity of access technologies including reach to Internet of Things infrastructures 
• Larger scale for Europe-wide early trials in the FI-PPP

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Community Networks Testbed for the Future Internet

Connected communities: A future internet, built by the people for the people 

 Deadline: 19 October 2013 

The CONFINE project is designing, building and operating a distributed testbed to support experimental research in community networking: Community-lab.net.

Topics of interest for this open call are around community networking, on aspects such as but not limited to:

• Wireless mesh networks 
• Wireless MAC and routing protocols 
• Services and applications for community networks 
• Cross-layer designs
• Hybrid networks with wireless and optical fibre links 
• Tools for bootstrapping and running community networks 
• Performance modelling and evaluation 
• Quality of service provisioning 
• Quality of experience in community networks 
• Community network security and privacy 
• Large-scale management and data collection infrastructures 
• Incentive models for encouraging users and businesses to participate in community networks 
• Socio-technical-economic experiments for community networks 
• Legal aspects of community networks 
• Increasing public awareness about the potential of community networks
• Engaging citizens and local administrations in community network developments

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European Mobile and Mobility Industries Alliance 2013

Deadline for submitting applications 04/11/2013 

The main objective of the call for proposals is to develop large-scale demonstrators of Copernicus and the European GNSS-based services.

For the purpose of this Call, a large-scale demonstrator will be required to: 

 1. Demonstrate how innovative, added-value services based on Copernicus and the European GNSS could address in an effective manner societal challenges. In this respect, the intention is to support the achievement of targets defined by the Europe 2020 strategy, supporting smart, inclusive and sustainable growth, while ensuring complementarity with the priorities foreseen under the future Horizon 2020 programme and to test the envisaged approach; 

2. Demonstrate how innovative, added-value services based on Copernicus and the European GNSS could support the emergence of new industries in a region or metropolitan area. The potential for export of the developed services to other European regions must also be demonstrated. Take-up of Copernicus services should consider, at least, the already functioning projects stemming out of the 7th Framework Programme. 

Each large-scale demonstrator can propose to tackle only one of activities (1) / (2) or both (1)+(2). 

The large-scale demonstrator shall encourage activities with a strong and visible impact. It shall be based on a holistic approach that brings together a large number of regional innovation actors to create a favourable eco-system for innovative mobile services based on Copernicus and GNSS. 

Regional and metropolitan governments and business communities are thus called upon to create supportive technical infrastructures and business conditions that facilitate the take-up of innovative services based on Copernicus and the European GNSS in a given region or metropolitan area, paving the way for their possible deployment in other regions.

Budget: € 2 375 000

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