Feb 10, 2022

Horizon Europe: EIC Work Program 2022 published!

The European Commission adopted the 2022 work program of the European Innovation Council (EIC) as part of Horizon Europe.

The EIC targets the identification, development and implementation of groundbreaking, disruptive and technology-oriented innovations. In addition to the necessary basis research, it supports market entry and rapid growth (scale-up) – particularly of innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The published work program contains the calls for proposals for 2022 in the three main funding lines of the EIC with a total budget of EUR 1.7 billion. They are open-topic („open“) as well as topic-specific („challenges“).

The EIC Pathfinder funds market-oriented technology research within multi-disciplinary research teams with up to EUR 4 million per project. Calls will be open until May 3^rd, 2022 (Pathfinder Open) and October 19^th, 2022 (Pathfinder Challenges). Consortia are expected to tackle one of the following topics when applying for the Pathfinder Challenges:

Carbon dioxide & nitrogen management and valorisation,
Mid-long term, systems-integrated energy storage,
Cardiogenomics,
Healthcare continuum technologies,
DNA-based digital data storage and
Alternative quantum information processing, communication, and sensing.

The EIC Transition aims at turning research results generated by EIC Pathfinder/FET Open or ERC Proof of Concept projects into innovation opportunities. Consortia or single legal entities may apply for funding up to 2,5 million EUR/project and submit their proposals anytime (cut-off dates: May 4^th, 2022 and September 28^th, 2022 – for both Transition Open and Transition Challenges). Almost half of the total budget is earmarked for activities relating to one of the following challenges:

Green digital devices for the future,
Process and system integration of clean energy technologies and
RNA-based therapies and diagnostics for complex or rare genetic diseases

The EIC Accelerator supports Start-ups and SMEs to develop and scale up high impact innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones. It provides a unique blended finance - combining equity between EUR 0.5 and EUR 15 million with grants up to EUR 2.5 million. Short applications both for Accelerator Open and Accelerator Challenges may be continuously submitted (cut-off dates for invited full applications: March 23^rd, June 15^th, October 5^th, 2022). Roughly 46 % of the total budget is foreseen for innovation in one of these thematic fields:

Technologies for Open Strategic Autonomy
Technologies for ‚Fit for 55‘

All EIC projects have access to its Business Acceleration Services, which provides coaches, mentors and expertise, partnering opportunities with corporates, investors and others, and a range of other services and events.