Eurostars

The aim of Eurostars is to sup­port European cooper­a­tion between small and medi­um-sized enter­prises (SMEs) in research and devel­op­ment pro­jects. Eurostars oper­ates on the same prin­ciple as the over­arch­ing Eureka ini­ti­at­ive: Eurostars pro­jects are tech­no­logy-neut­ral and serve civil­ian pur­poses. They aim to devel­op innov­at­ive products, pro­cesses or ser­vices. In accord­ance with the bot­tom-up prin­ciple, the pro­ject con­tent can be freely determ­ined by the par­ti­cip­at­ing partners.

Eurostars is there­fore primar­ily inten­ded to motiv­ate SMEs to con­duct research and devel­op­ment togeth­er with oth­er part­ners in cross-bor­der European cooper­a­tion pro­jects. It is expec­ted that the res­ults of the fun­ded R&D pro­jects will be on the mar­ket as products/​processes or ser­vices no later than two years after the end of the project.

Sub­ject of funding

Fund­ing is provided for research and devel­op­ment work in European col­lab­or­a­tions that cor­res­pond to the stated fund­ing pur­poses and objectives.

Recip­i­ents of funding

Eurostars 3 is aimed in par­tic­u­lar at innov­at­ive SMEs. These are SMEs as defined by the EU that devel­op a product, pro­cess or ser­vice in inter­na­tion­al pro­ject col­lab­or­a­tions. Research insti­tutes and large com­pan­ies can also par­ti­cip­ate as part­ners. In Ger­many, how­ever, research insti­tutes only receive fund­ing if a Ger­man SME is involved; large com­pan­ies do not receive fund­ing in Germany.

A pro­ject applic­a­tion requires at least two inde­pend­ent pro­ject part­ners from two of the Eurostars coun­tries; on aver­age, there are three to four part­ners per applic­a­tion. Ger­man part­ners in a pro­ject receive a max­im­um of €500,000 in funding.