SME instru­ment: more than 1,900 new applic­a­tions received

The 24 Septem­ber 2014 was the second cut-off date for Hori­zon 2020’s SME Instru­ment phase 1 . EASME received 1,944 new pro­pos­als, which makes in total more than 4,600 when adding up the applic­a­tions sub­mit­ted in June. The rank­ing by coun­try remains the same as in June, with Italy in the lead in terms of num­ber of applic­a­tions (351), fol­lowed by Spain (283), United King­dom (149), Ger­many (128), France (93) and Hun­gary (91). The Open Dis­rupt­ive Innov­a­tion (ODI) scheme attrac­ted the biggest num­ber of pro­pos­als (608), fol­lowed by low car­bon energy sys­tems (268), nan­o­tech­no­lo­gies (234) and eco-innov­a­tion/raw mater­i­als (199). The res­ult of the eval­u­ation should be avail­able towards the end of Novem­ber 2014. The list of the first 155 bene­fi­ciar­ies of the SME Instru­ment phase 1 has been already pub­lished. They will receive €50,000 to fin­ance feas­ib­il­ity stud­ies for their pro­jects; they can also bene­fit from up to three days of busi­ness coach­ing. The next dead­line for phase 1 is on 17 Decem­ber 2014. Source: EASME