Participation
Participation is open to companies of all sizes, universities and research organisations.
By participating in a Cluster project, you benefit from:
• access to national R&D funding,
• an international network of companies including key industry players,
• guidance, coaching and monitoring of your project by SMART office,
• low administrative requirements and
• receiving a quality label.
Scope
Your project should:
• address at least one of the fields mentioned in the call description and
• demonstrate the potential to research or develop a product, process or service for commercialisation.
Relevant industry sectors include (but are not limited to):
• Aerospace
• Automotive
• Railway
• Consumer Goods
• Capital Goods
• Industrial Components
Technologies to be researched and developed include (but are not limited to):
• Advanced Manufacturing processes
• Smart & Adaptive Manufacturing Services
• Digital, Virtual and Efficient Companies
• Person-machine Collaboration
• Sustainable Manufacturing
• Customer-Based Manufacturing
Timeframe
September 2024 Call opens
Autumn 2024
16/01/25 – 11:00 CET Project outline submission deadline
05/03/25 Proposals are invited to FPP phase
10/04/25 – 11:00 CEST Full project submission deadline
02/06/25 Eureka label given
Eligibility
Eureka has limited eligibility criteria for organisations participating in a Clusters consortium:
- Your project idea must represent international cooperation in the form of a specific project.
- The project must be directed at researching or developing an innovative product, process or service with the goal of commercialisation.
- The project must have a civilian purpose.
- Your consortium must include at least two independent legal entities from a minimum of two Eureka countries.
- No single organisation or country can be responsible for more than 70% of the project budget.
If there is no allocated budget for your organisation type in your country and you want to participate in a project consortium, contact your national funding body using the form below to see whether there are other funding opportunities available or talk to them about self-funding.
Evaluation
Your project will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
- Rationale of the project
- One-page description
- Problem statement and market value chain
- Project innovations and technology value chain
- Technology
- State-of-the-art analysis
- Technological Innovation regarding the SoA
- Expected Project Outputs and quantified KPIs
- Targeted impact
- Market analysis
- Consortium market access
- Impact of the project on the overall goals of SMART
- Impact on sustainability
- Consortium overview
- Cooperation added value: business level
- Cooperation added value: technology level
- Is gender balance considered?
- Implementation
- Project structure and main milestones
- Work-Package descriptions
- Deliverables
- Milestones
- Writing quality
- Readability
- Focus and conciseness
Your national funding body may carry out a further evaluation (performed by the national project coordinator and technical experts) according to national rules before allocating funds to successful applicants.
Applying
- Contact your national funding body and SMART office to discuss your project idea and eligibility.
- Create an account on application portal.
- Submit your project outline (an overview of the project, its main objective, partnerships and expected impact) and receive feedback.
- Submit your final project proposal.
Please note that your national funding body may have additional steps for applying for R&D funding.
Events and partner search
SMART will organise the following events, which offer opportunities for meeting potential project partners:
PO Day in Autumn 2024
