The European Commission (EC) has for the first time presented calls for projects under Horizon 2020; worth more than €15 billion over the first two years, the funding is intended to help boost Europe’s knowledge-driven economy, and tackle issues that will make a difference in people’s lives.
The EC writes:
For the first time, the Commission has indicated funding priorities over two years, providing researchers and businesses with more certainty than ever before on the direction of EU research policy. Most calls from the 2014 budget are already open for submissions as of today, with more to follow over the course of the year. Calls in the 2014 budget alone are worth around €7.8 billion, with funding focused on the three key pillars of Horizon 2020:
· Excellent Science: Around €3 billion, including €1.7 billion for grants from the European Research Council for top scientists and €800 million for Marie Sk?odowska-Curie fellowships for younger researchers (see MEMO/13/1123).
· Industrial Leadership: €1.8 billion to support Europe’s industrial leadership in areas like ICT, nanotechnologies, advanced manufacturing, robotics, biotechnologies and space.
· Societal challenges: €2.8 billion for innovative projects addressing Horizon 2020’s seven societal challenges, broadly: health; agriculture, maritime and bioeconomy; energy; transport; climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials; reflective societies; and security.
Horizon 2020 – first calls
The Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2014-15 sets out the funding opportunities under the different parts of the programme… Each part describes the overall objectives, the respective calls, and the topics within each call. Each topic describes the challenge to be addressed, the scope of the activities to be carried out, and the expected impacts to be achieved. Compared with the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), there are relatively fewer calls and topics. The Work Programme reflects the strong challenge-based approach of Horizon 2020, allowing applicants to have considerable freedom to come up with innovative solutions. This MEMO highlights some key aspects of the Work Programme.
Twelve focus areas
A number of areas have been identified for special focus in the first Horizon 2020 Work Programme. Each of these is embedded in the relevant parts of the Work Programme, and covered by a specific call. The 12 focus areas represent around 15% of the total number of calls covered by the Work Programme and amount for a total 2014 budget of €2 billion.
These include:
Smart cities and communities (2014 budget: €92 million)
Energy Efficiency (2014 budget: €98 million)
Waste: a resource to recycle, reuse and recover raw materials (2014 budget: €73 million)
Overcoming the crisis: new ideas, strategies and governance structures for Europe (2014 budget: €35 million)
Disaster-resilience: safeguarding and securing society, including adapting to climate change (2014 budget: €72 million)
Cross cutting issues
Horizon 2020 cross-cutting issues have been mainstreamed in each of the different parts of the Work Programme, ensuring a more integrated approach.
Social Sciences and Humanities
Social Sciences and Humanities research (SSH) is fully integrated into each of the pillars of Horizon 2020 and each of the specific objectives. It is a key objective that SSH will contribute to the evidence base for policy making at international, EU, national, and regional levels. In addition, SSH is at the heart of the societal challenge ‘Europe in a changing world: Inclusive, innovative and reflective societies’ (part 13 of the Work Programme).
Almost 200 topics in the programmed parts of Horizon 2020 are relevant to Social Sciences and Humanities. This represents around 35% of the total topics in the Work Programme. All these are flagged by the system designed for searching the Work Programme. Estimated budget to SSH related topics: over €400 million (in addition to funding available through the ERC and the MSCA)
International Cooperation
International cooperation in research and innovation is a cross-cutting priority in Horizon 2020. The programme is open to the participation of researchers from across the world. In addition, targeted international cooperation activities are included across the societal challenges, enabling and industrial technologies and other relevant parts of the programme. For each of these activities, the area and partner for cooperation are identified upfront .
Gender
Applicants to Horizon 2020 are encouraged to promote equal opportunities in the implementation of the action and to ensure a balanced participation of women and men at all levels in research and innovation teams and in management structures.
Climate Action and Sustainable Development
There is untapped potential for the European economy to be more innovative, productive and competitive whilst using fewer resources and reducing environmental impacts. It is expected that at least 60% of the overall Horizon 2020 budget should be related to sustainable development, and that climate-related expenditure should exceed 35% of the budget, including measures improving resource efficiency. The first calls foresee, for example, projects that use CO2 in chemical processes, enhance the performance of electric vehicles or make our critical infrastructures more resilient against climate extremes. Also in the first calls, there are offers of funding for projects that improve our understanding of the complex interactions that take place between ecosystems; better use of Earth observation data systems for exchanging environmental and climate knowledge with policymakers, business, and society; assessing the costs and opportunities of climate mitigation options in the EU; focusing on sustainable access to and production of raw materials; ensuring resource efficient, eco innovative food production; forecasting and anticipating the effects of climate change on fisheries and aquaculture; promoting organisational innovation to increase energy efficiency in industry; and exploiting the potential of SMEs in low-carbon energy systems.
For a summary of Horizon 2020 first calls see: LINK
EC Press Release: LINK
EC News: LINK
