OPEN CALL FOR FSTP

SYSTEMEU provides Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP) to fund interregional collaborative projects focused on digital transformation in Healthcare, Energy, and Mobility. The support is addressed to consortia composed of research organizations, companies, and public entities from the five SYSTEMEU regions, and projects must be implemented and tested in real-world environments.

During the implementation of the SYSTEMEU action plan, up to six interregional projects will be selected to form a portfolio of innovative initiatives. The objective is to foster interregional collaboration, promote knowledge and resource sharing, and ensure that the solutions developed are scalable, impactful, and capable of delivering measurable results in operational settings.

To achieve this, SYSTEMEU has earmarked €7.7 million, representing 51.8% of the total action plan budget, to financially support the selected consortia in the development, testing, and validation of innovative digital solutions in the targeted sectors.

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Scope of topics

Innovation Action. Sharing of resources, assets, capacities and knowledge across regions for the development, testing and/or deployment of breakthrough technologies and/or disruptive innovations in real environment contexts, including prototyping, responding to digital transformation challenges identified by SYSTEMEU in one of the following areas – Healthcare, Energy and Mobility.

Topics will be launched as broader challenges with examples of possible projects in brackets – allowing flexibility to applying consortia.

FSTP recipients

Beneficiaries have to be consortia composed by research and innovation actors of any type (profit and non-profit) located in one of the five participating in SYSTEMEU:

🇩🇪 Bavaria (Germany)
🇷🇴 Northwest (Romania)
🇪🇸 Castile-Leon (Spain)
🇧🇦 Tuzla Canton (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
🇵🇹 North Region (Portugal)

Requirement of consortia in terms of regional coverage and type of actors involved varies depending of the project’s coverage ambition:

For small to medium-sized projects (5-8 projects) two options apply:

Option 1: 2-3 independent legal entities from minimum two regions of SYSTEMEU out of which at least one must be for profit company (of any kind) with a maximum allocated budget of 750.000 EUR
Option 2: 3-5 independent entities from at least 3 different participating regions, including at least one research organisation (RTO, university) and one for profit company (of any kind). For medium sized project of 3-5 entities we anticipate the funding of 1.1 MEUR per project, in any of the three topics of SYSTEMEU

Flagship – full-range project: 5-8 independent entities covering all the 5 participating regions and representing the triple helix: at least one research organisation (RTO, university), one company (of any kind) and one public authority/public sector entity.

SYSTEMEU consortium reserves the right to award additional 2-4 small to medium sized projects in case a flagship project is not submitted.

Duration

From min 15 to maximum of 18 months.

Funding support to be received

1.1M-2,2 M EUR per project, with the following maximum depending of the project’s coverage ambition:

For five medium-range projects: up to 1.1M EUR
For one full-range projects: up to 2,2 M EUR

Funding rate per individual Third Party: 70% (except for startups and non-profit legal entities, where a rate of 100% applies). Maximum amount to be granted per individual Third Party (in one or more interregional projects): 600,000 EUR

TRL

TRL startnig: Minimum TRL for starting the project is TRL 6 across the verticals (healthcare, energy, mobility)

TRL ending: TRL 8.

Additional conditions related to the Funding of regional BEN

Interregional projects will dedicate efforts for the dissemination and exploitation of results.

*Minimum 1 project per sector:

Healthcare
Energy
Mobility

Each ecosystem leader, represented by government, (or other type of entity which on its budget has cascade funding) will directly finance the grantee from their own region following the jointly agreed scheme, as an example:

Prefinancing: 25 % after signature of the agreement.
Interim financing: 50% (halfway through the project)
Final financing: 25 % upon submission of reporting, and after final approval by both SYSTEMEU monitoring team and EC. To be released within 6 months of project end.

Evaluation of the projects

The independent evaluation will be done by independent evaluators. Each proposal will be evaluated by 3 independent experts which must ratify Confidentiality and ‘Non-conflict of interests’ statements before starting the evaluation:

1 Partner expert.
- The Partners’ experts have to be independent from applicants and cannot be members of SYSTEMEU Evaluation Board responsible for final decision on selection.
Partner expert can be an employee of SYSTEMEU BEN however not actively or directly working on the project and can be either internal or external expert of BEN working in a different department but having expertise (innovation and domain) for the topic in question. Each regional coordinator of SYSTEMEU will allocate 3 experts, one for each topic, who will be paired with external evaluators.
2 External experts. These external experts must be independent from the applicants and cannot be Consortium partners employees, permanent collaborators nor board members. SCE will set up a pool of evaluators from external experts in facilitating cross-border deep-tech projects, and be appointed according to the specific characteristics of the applicants; as indicated in chapter 3 of the Proposal, the subcontracting budget has been allocated to cover their fees as evaluators.
Monitoring Team: Each region will allocate 4 contacts who will make monitoring teams for the projects selected. These contacts will act at the same time as info personnel in the period of starting info sessions until call closure as Q&A communicators. The Q&A aspects will be provided on the landing page but also within the Open hubs community where the personnel will be visible.

Monitoring of project

Each funded project will receive a project officer group from SYSTEMEU:

Project Monitoring Group will consist of 1 representative from each ecosystem whose BEN is involved in the project.

Dates

Anticipated start of the Open call is June 2026, with the call being open until 01.10-15.10. days.
Evaluation: 01./15. 10 – 30.11
Communication of results: 01.12.
Appeal procedure: 2 weeks
Initiation of signing the contracts: 01.01.2027
Start of projects: 01.02.2027
Max duration of projects: 20 months, closing with August 2028.

Funding allocation per region

15% of support to FSTP recipients located in Bavaria (Germany).
20% of support to FSTP recipients located in Northwest (Romania)
25% of support to FSTP recipients located in Castile-Leon (Spain)
20% of support to FSTP recipients located in North Region of Portugal 20% of support to FSTP recipients located in Tuzla Canton (Bosnia Herzegovina)

Type of beneficiaries

The eligible entities can be:

research-and-innovation performing entities of any type.
companies of any size involved in research and innovation activities.
public authorities involved in the implementation of innovation policies or the deployment of digital transformations.
public sector entities involved in the provision of services related to Healthcare, Energy or Mobility

Composition of consortia

For medium-range projects: 2-3 or 3-5 independent entities from at least 2 and 3 different participating regions, including at least one research organisation (RTO, university), one for profit company (of any kind)

For full-range projects: 5-8 independent entities covering all the 5 participating regions and representing the triple helix: at least one research organisation (RTO, university), one company (of any kind) and one public authority/public sector entity.

Funding amount and funding rate

The funding amount per BEN is not minimally set, but cannot exceed 600.000 EUR.

For profit entities will receive 70% funding, except for startups 9 , which will receive 100% funding.

Non-profit legal entities will receive 100% funding.

Startups definition SYSTEMEU:

A startup is a company that:

Is newly created or ≤7 years old (≤7 years for biotech/industrial sectors)
Has innovative or disruptive character
Has a scalable business model
Is independent (not a subsidiary of large company)
Has not distributed dividends
Has annual turnover below €10 million

Participation in multiple projects

One entity, applicant, can be part of multiple projects as long as their overall budget does not exceed 600.000

The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101161224

Co-Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Based on gender equality

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