LAUNCH OF EUROPEAN MISSION “100 CLIMATE-NEUTRAL & SMART CITIES BY 2030”

The European Commission has launched a call for expressions of interest with a closing date of 31 January 2022 inviting cities to join the European Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities.

The objectives of the mission are to achieve 100 climate-neutral and smart European cities by 2030 and to ensure that these cities act as experimentation and innovation hubs to enable all European cities to follow suit by 2050. Five missions were identified in the Horizon Europe Strategic plan. As such, Horizon Europe will provide initial funding to missions of up to €1.9 billion until 2023, including €359.3 million for the Cities Mission.

By joining the mission, selected cities will be at the forefront of innovation and the transition towards climate neutrality, as part of the European Green Deal. In fighting against climate change through the deployment of solutions, cities are best placed to be early adopters of policies to achieve climate neutrality. In doing so, they can deliver a range of benefits to their communities including reduced air and noise pollution, less congestion, lower energy bills and healthier lifestyles.

After assessment by independent experts, the Commission will announce the list of selected participant cities by April 2022 with the first cities able to start working on their Climate City Contracts with the support of the Mission Platform as soon as possible thereafter.

EIC ACCELERATOR ACTIVATES LARGEST-EVER FUNDING ROUND

Following the October 2021 cut-off date, the European Commission has selected 99 innovative start-ups and SMEs which will receive EUR 627 million of EU funding to help them bring their promising technologies to market. The selected companies will receive grants and/or equity investments, depending on their needs, up to a maximum of EUR 17.5 million.

The applicants were selected following a rigorous process, introduced under Horizon Europe, involving an idea screening stage, and a full application assessed by external experts and an interview with a jury of experienced investors and entrepreneurs.

The selected companies have a wide geographical spread spanning 21 countries, including seven from Horizon Europe “widening countries” that have lower levels of research and innovation performance. The selection also confirms the high demand for EIC equity investments with 65 of the 99 companies requesting equity investments of up to EUR 414 million (out of the total EUR 627 million). In most cases, the companies will receive the grant financing within the coming months, while the equity investment is likely to take longer as the arrangements for implementing EIC equity need to be re-established under Horizon Europe. This delay will also affect companies selected in the previous funding round.

Companies can submit their ideas to the EIC Accelerator at any time. For ideas meeting the EIC criteria for excellence, impact and risk-level, companies are invited to prepare full applications to submit to one of the regular cut-off dates. Due to a delay in the adoption of the EIC Work Programme, the January 2022 cut-off date has been postponed till later in the first quarter.

HORIZON IMPACT AWARD 2022 LAUNCHED

On 6 January 2022, the European Commission launched the third edition of its Horizon Impact Award prize! The award is open to all beneficiaries of closed FP7/H2020 projects who are invited to submit their application to the prize by 8 March 2022. There are 6 money prizes worth €25 000 each. The awards also provide the winners with high visibility in the form of public interest and increased media coverage.

This award is the European Commission’s initiative to recognise and celebrate outstanding projects that have used their results to provide value for society. It aims also to show the wider socio-economic benefits of EU investment in research and innovation.

The award enables individuals or teams to showcase their best practices and achievements. By creating role models and inspiring beneficiaries of research and innovation funding to maximise the impact of their research, the award also aims to encourage other beneficiaries to use and manage their results in the best way possible. They can do this by directly exploiting results or by playing an active role ensuring stakeholders effectively use the results.

The applications must address the following cumulative criteria:

Pathway from results to societal benefits:
Applicants will need to detail how the R&I results were directly or indirectly exploited after the lifetime of the project. They will need to describe the activities that were done to ensure that the R&I results lead to societal benefits. They will need to describe the scale and the sustainability of their actions.

Achieved impact:
Applicants will need to demonstrate the already existing impact and societal benefits created. They will need to detail concrete examples of how their research results have benefited society and who are the user communities that have derived value from it. The achieved impact must be already materialized. Applicants will be required to submit a letter of support from at least one user or user community, stating the importance of the research and how using it created concrete benefits for the specific user-community.

Further information can be found at https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/funding/funding-opportunities/prizes/horizon-impact-award_en

WINNERS OF THE EUROPEAN SOCIAL INNOVATION COMPETITION ANNOUNCED

Launched in memory of social innovation pioneer Diogo Vasconcelos, the European Social Innovation Competition is run by the European Commission, with the support from the EIC across all EU Member States and Horizon Europe associated countries. Each year, three €50,000 prizes are awarded for the best socially innovative projects designed to change the world for the better. This was the 9th edition of the competition.

On 8 December 2021, the European Commission announced the winners of the 9th edition who were selected for addressing the 2021 challenge ‘Skills for Tomorrow – Shaping a green and digital future’.

The 2021 winners are:

• SkillLab, a project from the Netherlands that is developing mobile solutions to help people identify and express their skills. It also matches skills to occupations and training offerings that address skill gaps.
• Snowball Effect, an Austrian school supporting social entrepreneurs to replicate successful social entreprises in their region.
• Zekki – What’s up?, a digital service from Finland that matches young people with various support services based on an online wellbeing self-assessment quiz.

In addition, every year an Impact Prize is awarded to one of the participants who reached the semi-finals in the previous year’s competition, based on results achieved over the past twelve months. The 2021 winner is MycoTEX®, a project that uses an innovative technology to create clothing out of sustainable, vegan textiles.

EIC AND ESA LAUNCH JOINT CALL TO IMPLEMENT CIRCULAR ECONOMY IN SPACE

The European Innovation Council (EIC) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have launched a joint call for contributions to collect ideas for implementing the concept of ‘circular economy’ and technologies and sustainable processes in space.

While actual human settlements on the Moon and the Mars are still to come, the fundamentals of living in space are already clear. To make such bases sustainable over the long term, astronauts and potential settlers will have to recycle their air, water and nutrients as much as possible to minimise their reliance on long, costly supply lines back to their distant home planet.

The principal aim of the joint call is to seek out concepts targeting the reuse and recycling of water, food, oxygen, nitrogen and other scarce resources from apparent waste material. Alongside their application possibilities in space, these solutions should also be applicable to Earth as they create synergies with terrestrial initiatives towards a circular economy.

The underlying idea behind this concept is not new. For example, the International Space Station already recycles all the water it can, including crew urine, sweat, moisture from wet towels, and even the humidity from astronauts’ breathing. And for more than three decades now, the ESA-led Micro-Ecological Life Support Alternative, MELiSSA, programme has investigated the designing of ‘regenerative’ or closed loop life support systems for crewed missions into deep space.

ESA and EIC have selected four dedicated challenges:

• Circular System Design Methodology
• Circular Waste Management
• Circular Urine Management
• Circular Food Management

for which they are looking for ideas for critical technology building blocks, policy, legislation and investment frameworks. Jointly, EIC and ESA will evaluate contributions and the winning contributors will be invited to a workshop, which aims to produce a joint strategy proposal for the coming decade.

More details on the submission process and challenges are provided in the letter of invitation which can be found at https://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/business_with_esa/EIC_ESA_Call_for_Contributions_rev7_final.pdf

The deadline for submissions closes on 1 March 2022 at midnight.

EYE CELEBRATES MILESTONE OF 10 000 YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS SUPPORTED

At the beginning of December, the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs (EYE) programme celebrated a key milestone by reaching 10 000 entrepreneurs who have gained experience from working with an entrepreneur in a different country.

Since its establishment in 2009, the programme has helped new entrepreneurs develop their entrepreneurial skills and gain business experience through on-the-job training in a host company abroad. At the same time, host entrepreneurs can benefit from new ideas, insights and energy that come from hosting younger colleagues.

The Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme facilitates entrepreneurial exchanges across 39 participating countries in Europe and its neighbourhood, lasting up to six months. The programme is funded by the European Commission and has grown steadily since its launch – demonstrating a recent pick up after the initial slowdown at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is one of the pillars of the EU SME strategy, which supports SMEs and helps them gain access to international markets. Thanks to extra financial support from the European Parliament since 2018, new destinations beyond Europe have been included in the EYE GLOBAL initiative, which now also allows for exchanges with entrepreneurs in the US, Canada, Israel, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.

https://www.erasmus-entrepreneurs.eu/

EUROPEAN CLUSTER PANORAMA 2021 PUBLISHED

Last December the Commission published the 2021 edition of the European Cluster Panorama: a comprehensive picture of economic activity across the EU and industrial ecosystems.

The latest European Cluster Panorama report presents the state of play of clusters in Europe and the role they play in fostering resilient, green and digital industrial ecosystems in regional economies. The report gives a comprehensive picture of the concentration of economic activity and cluster organisations in EU countries based on sectoral data for employment and value-added across the 14 European industrial ecosystems identified in the updated Industrial Strategy.

The report comes with an interactive mapping tool, which maps over 1 000 cluster organisations, and inspiring examples of policies and practices to support clusters’ mission through a Policy Toolkit. Clusters represent about 25% of EU employment and are located across 201 regions in Europe. Over 80% of European cluster organisations support companies in their digital transition and more than 60% support the green transition. The Commission integrates and activates clusters through the European Cluster Collaboration Platform, which supports collaboration among clusters, internationalisation, matchmaking, access to public and private funding, communication and advisory services.

The 116-page report can be found at https://clustercollaboration.eu/sites/default/files/2021-12/European_Cluster_Panorama_Report_0.pdf

NEW EU FUND LAUNCHED TO PROTECT SMEs’ IP

The European Commission and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) have launched a new EU SME Fund which offers vouchers for EU-based SMEs to help them protect their intellectual property (IP) rights. This is the second EU SME Fund aiming to support SMEs in the COVID-19 recovery and green and digital transitions for the next three years (2022-2024).

The EU SME Fund, with a budget of €47 million, will offer the following support:

• Reimburse 90% of the fees charged by Member States for IP Scan services, which provide a broad assessment of the intellectual property needs of the applying SME, taking into account the innovative potential of its intangible assets;
• Reimburse 75% of the fees charged by intellectual property offices (including national intellectual property offices, the European Union Intellectual Property Office and the Benelux Intellectual Property Office) for trademark and design registration
• Reimburse 50% of the fees charged by the World Intellectual Property Organisation for obtaining international trade mark and design protection;
• Reimburse 50% of the fees charged by national patent offices for the registration of patents in 2022.

From 2023, further services could be covered, e.g. partial reimbursement of the costs of the patent prior art search, of the patent filing application; private IP advice charged by IP attorneys (for patent registration, licensing agreements, IP valuation, alternative dispute resolution costs, etc.).

EUIPO will manage the SME Fund through calls for proposals. The first call has already been launched on the EUIPO website at https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/en/grants-sme-fund-2022

In order to ensure fair and equal treatment of potential beneficiaries as well as safeguarding an efficient management of the action, the application for grants will be open throughout the period 2022-2024. The applications will be examined and evaluated based on a ‘first in first out’ criterion. SMEs with no experience in the area of intellectual property are encouraged to apply first for an IP Scan service and only subsequently to the other services.

At the EU Industry Days (8-11 February 2022) a special session will be dedicated to the SME Fund allowing SMEs to ask questions to the experts managing the Fund and receive a practical guide on how to apply for the different services. The special session is scheduled for 11 February 2022. It can be followed remotely by subscribing to the EU Industry Days at https://ec.europa.eu/info/policies/business-and-industry/eu-industry-days_en

EUROPEAN INNOVATION COUNCIL IMPACT REPORT PUBLISHED

The fully-fledged European Innovation Council (EIC), launched in March 2021 under Horizon Europe, is a major new player on the innovation landscape. Its unique approach to identifying, developing and scaling up Europe’s breakthrough technologies and game-changing innovation is already delivering tangible results.

The 2021 Impact Report documents the results and impact of the EIC pilot phase up to 2020. During that period, the EIC supported 5 500 start-ups and SMEs which have:

• Crowded in EUR 9.6 billion in follow-on investments, primarily from venture capital, but also from corporates, national promotional banks and others.
• Reached a valuation of around EUR 50 billion, including 91 “centaurs” (company valuation over €100m) and 2 “unicorns” (company valuation over EUR 1 billion).
• An increasing number of women-led start-ups: of those awarded funding in 2020, over 20 percent have a female CEO, a doubling of the previous level.

The EIC Fund, established in 2020, entered full operations in the first six months of 2021:

• Investment decisions taken on 137 companies worth EUR 600 million.
• The first 24 direct equity investments by the EIC Fund attracted co-investments by VC funds and others of € 395 million (2.7 times the EIC Fund investment).

The EIC is generating scientific breakthroughs as a basis for future innovations:

• EIC supported research projects have generated so far over 800 innovations. The majority of these projects include SMEs or other commercial partners.
• EIC Programme Managers pro-actively support the follow-up of emerging technologies into potential innovations, through spin-outs, IPRs, collaborations and other pathways.
• EUR 100 million of EIC Transition funding in 2021 to pull through proofs of concept from ERC and EIC into commercial ventures.

And new solutions for healthcare and the Green and Digital transitions:

• As of 2020, 90.5% of the portfolio of EIC Accelerator companies are developing innovations that address at least one SDG.
• The 218 start-ups awarded EIC funding in 2020, include 72 developing innovative solutions for COVID, at least 64 for Green Deal and at least 40 for digital technologies.

The full report and factsheet can be downloaded from https://eic.ec.europa.eu/news/european-innovation-council-impact-report-2021-key-numbers-eic-performance-2021-11-24_en

DORTMUND IS ICAPITAL 2021

The winners of the seventh edition of the European Capital of Innovation Awards “iCapital” were announced during the first European Innovation Council Summit held from 24 to 26 November. The city of Dortmund in Germany is the European Capital of Innovation 2021 and the city of Vantaa in Finland is the European Rising Innovative City.

Two high-level juries of independent experts selected the winners and runners-up in the two prize categories after a rigorous examination process. Dublin, Ireland and Malaga, Spain tied for second place in the European Capital of Innovation category. The third position goes to Vilnius, Lithuania. In the European Rising Innovative City category, Cascais, Portugal and Trondheim, Norway were ranked second and third, respectively.

These awards acknowledge cities’ long-term efforts to foster an atmosphere that encourages and supports innovation. The cities have come up with creative ideas, putting in place processes, tools, and governance models to achieve outstanding results.They could serve as powerful role models for cities across Europe and beyond that have been affected by the pandemic and will need to undergo transformation.

In addition to the award, the winner of the European Capital of Innovation category will receive a monetary prize of €1 million, with the two runners-up receiving €100 000. (Dublin and Malaga will share the prize.) The winner of the European Rising Innovative City category receives €500 000, while the runners-up each get €50 000.

Dortmund follows in the footsteps of Leuven (2020), Nantes (2019), Athens (2018), Paris (2017) Amsterdam (2016) and Barcelona (2014) as European Capital of Innovation.