European funding besides Horizon 2020

EUREKA is a well-established network existing for more than 30 years now. The programme has a strong market and SME approach and will give your company the chance to get involved in international projects. Any kind of institution (SME, company, university, etc.) wanting to develop innovative products and services beyond national boundaries can take part in the programme.

How does it work?

EUREKA is composed of 4 sub-programmes:

• EUREKA Individual Projects involve at least 2 members from the EUREKA network with national funding.
• EUREKA Eurostars join funding and support among the EUREKA member countries and the European Commission for projects of research-performing SMEs.
• EUREKA Clusters are more oriented towards large companies that develop generic technologies. This programme is funded nationally.
• EUREKA Umbrellas are networks for cross-border thematics that focus on assistance for project generation in a specific technology area or business sector.

EUREKA has a "bottom up" approach meaning that participants can freely choose the topic of their project but projects must be market-driven, with the final result being a commercially viable new product, process or service. There are no calls for proposals or topics (except for Eurostars), meaning that you can submit your project idea whenever you want.

More information on the SERI website. 

EUREKA Innovation Event, 19 November 2014, Basel
Euresearch is organising this event together with the State Secretariat for Research, Education and Innovation to provide an opportunity to network in an international environment at the B2B Meetings, and to give an insight into the benefit of EUREKA’s activities.

The goal is to find suitable partners for a EUREKA Eurostars project. Focus: ICT, industrial products and manufacturing, bio- and medical technologies.

More information on the SIF website.

Other funding besides Horizon 2020
EUREKA is not the only funding instrument besides the European Framework Programme Horizon 2020. Numerous other financing options for international research are available through other European research and innovation programmes. These programmes focus on various different research areas and even include some overlap with Horizon 2020. But for all multilateral programmes without (or with just part) European Commission involvement, researchers have access to funding initiated by several Member States or joint programmes.

One goal set by the European Commission is to implement joint research agendas, through joint or at least synchronised calls between Member States. But it is not at all easy to keep an overview of the different funding instruments. Intergovernmental funding, such as in COST, is nationally funded research coordinated on a European level (Article 184). Article 185 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union enables the European Union to participate in research programmes undertaken jointly by several Member States, including participation in the structures created for the execution of national programmes. In some cases, these are too complex and national research programmes cannot tackle them effectively on their own.

More information on the Euresearch website.