The New European Bauhaus (NEB) brings the European Green Deal to life through inclusivity, aesthetics, and sustainability, evolving from grassroots efforts to impactful implementation. Central to this is the NEB Facility, which bridges research and innovation (R&I) with roll-out efforts, focusing on local neighbourhoods. NEB4All supports the Facility by strengthening a transnational network of Horizon Europe (HE) and Policy (POL) National Contact Points (NCPs), fostering collaboration, sharing best practices, and empowering NEB NCPs to deliver exceptional support to NEB Facility stakeholders. NEB4All unites 28 NCPs from 25 countries, combining the expertise of experienced and newly appointed members. Through tailored training, mentoring, and peer learning, it enhances NCP capacities, improving stakeholder support, increasing participation in NEB calls, and elevating proposal quality. Key objectives of NEB4All include: (1) Building NCP Capacity: Providing training and tools to align HE and POL NCPs and bridge knowledge gaps. (2) Raising Awareness: Equipping NCPs to engage national stakeholders and promote the NEB Facility effectively. (3) Improving Feedback Mechanisms: Creating systems to collect stakeholder insights and deliver actionable feedback to the European Commission. (4) Supporting Stakeholders: Empowering applicants through matchmaking events and stakeholder meetings. NEB4All lowers barriers to participation for stakeholders like municipalities, companies, researchers (from technical backgrounds and social sciences, humanities and arts), and civil society, fostering connections across the NEB ecosystem. By ensuring high-quality services and gathering actionable feedback, it enhances the NEB Facility’s visibility, accessibility, and impact, driving sustainable innovation and inclusive growth across Europe.

The NCP4HE project has been designed, on one hand, to bring together and support the needs of the NCP National Coordinators and Legal & Financial NCPs communities and, on the other, to boost a closer and more efficient coordination and cooperation among the different NCP configurations through the infrastructures inherited by the Bridge2HE project, namely the HE NCP Portal and the NCP Virtual Campus, which the project will continue maintaining and developing, enlarging them in content, functionalities and userbase. A large series of activities involving training events, e-learning courses, pre-meetings, meet and exchange workshops, coffee-talks, and mentoring activities, have been planned to provide horizontal support to the whole NPC community, improve mutual learning, and create a structured space for exchange, with a particular focus on newcomers. NCP4HE will also prepare the ground for NCPs in the transition from Horizon Europe to the next Framework Programme working closely with the European Commission and their agencies to ensure a proper interaction with NCPs during that preparatory process. NCP4HE brings together a wide and comprehensive consortium of 36 NCPs host organizations from 22 MS and 9 AS countries, spanning three continents. Additionally, 11 of the 15 widening member countries are represented in the consortium. The project includes a balance mix of NCPs from countries with extensive participation in Horizon 2020 with NCPs coming from countries with low level of participation. This wide spectrum of partners is there to ensure that the project activities and outputs serve as many NCPs as possible, but also that the whole community needs are taken into account when designing and implementing the planned actions.

The overall idea of the BioHorizon proposal is to establish innovative and mutually learning pan-European platform for transnational activities of NCPs involved in the SC2 and KET-B. The aim is also to create a network of NCPs exploiting the synergies of acquired and distributed knowledge, collective development and trainings, in which all NCPs can learn from each other, thus increasing mutual understanding of different approaches and requirements in the daily work of an NCP. The network will develop novel, high quality services provided to SC2 and KET-B beneficiaries. The excellent assistance provided by BioHorizon will go beyond typical NCP services, since the established network will put an emphasis on complex and multidisciplinary aspects of Horizon 2020, including widening participation of the EU 28. The methodology applied to achieve the objectives includes: trainings, workshops addressed at NCP needs identified during the evaluation of current activities,, networking staff exchange programme, e-mentoring scheme and trans-national brokerage events. Furthermore, based on the results of the previous project, the new BioHorizon will greatly improve and enhance capacity building and networking opportunities by continuing with activities and measures proven to be successful, but also including new elements. BioHorizon will fully cover activities that include innovative and efficient training of NCPs across Europe, thus helping to simplify and increase access to H2020 calls, lowering barriers for newcomers and improving the quality of proposals submitted. Special attention will be given to networking and improved collaboration of the ICPC NCPs, supporting and increasing their integration with the European NCPs. BioHorizon aimes to generate high impact on different levels: improvement and professionalisation of NCP services, higher number and higher quality of proposals submitted through the establishment of an active network of SC2 and KET-B NCPs at European level.

The use of online collaboration platforms facilitates the access of SMEs to Open Innovation environments where they can collaborate, co-create and co-participate in innovation projects. Despite these benefits, European SMEs have so far failed to embrace the use of online platforms to facilitate open innovation. The Europe Enterprise Network, the most widespread innovation support service in Europe, is successfully addressing this challenge mainly by organising brokerage events or clusters around interested stakeholders. However, EEN support services are very labour intensive, and the resources available are small, meaning many agents are unable to offer the level of support they believe is necessary. This often results in collaborations being set up, but then failing to realise their potential due to the lack of ongoing monitoring, support and management. The NIR-VANA project will tackle these drawbacks through the design of a new service that will be provided by innovation agents. This service will promote the online collaboration for SME during the entire innovation process using an innovative approach based on ICT solutions, training and novel methods to support SMEs. Three members of the EEN a two other innovation organisations will collaborate in the design of the services that will be later tested by other 10 EENs and innovation agencies. The project will develop an ICT-based layer that will facilitate the work of the innovation agents and will also promote a change of mentality of the SME. Some services will be provided online using a novel Networking and Innovation Room (NIR) where the innovation agents and the SMEs interact to develop innovation partnerships. These services will allow direct and ongoing support provided by the innovation agents to the SMEs, links to other platforms/social networks, increased efficiency for the management and monitoring, and services aimed at encouraging SMEs involvement.

C-ENERGY 2020 V2 is a 18 months Coordination and Support Action having the specific objectives: 1. to improve the knowledge and skills of the Energy NCPs, particularly of NCPs in those countries that have been participating at low levels in the programme up to now; 2. to raise the general standard of support to programme applicants and simplify access to Horizon 2020 calls for newcomers and applicants from widening countries by supporting the provision of a high quality, professional Energy NCP services for Horizon 2020; 3. to facilitate transnational cooperation amongst Energy NCPs including non-beneficiaries. C-ENERGY 2020 V2 will capitalise on relevant activities of the previous NCP network project in the Energy sector (C-ENERGY 2020) and those of the NCP Academy. C-ENERGY 2020 V2 will be carried out by a consortium of 18 beneficiaries, 16 of which are from EU Member States and 2 from Associate Countries to Horizon 2020. Several widening countries are partners of the project (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and Portugal). C-ENERGY 2020 V2 will organise at least 4 webinars, 2 trainings, 1 Masterclass and 1 twinning . The applicants will benefit of at least 2 brokerage events and 3 training for stakeholders. The project will also take special care of outreaching activities by extending the collaboration with other NCP thematic networks and cooperating with EEN. Finally, communication within and outside the Energy NCP network will be ensured through the website, the promotional materials, social media and the participation at major events. Throughout the project special attention will be paid to those countries that have been participating at low levels in the programme up to now and to the diversity of stakeholders in the energy sector.