RICH Europe is a 84 month Coordination and Support Action built on the past experience and achievements of the Research Infrastructures Networks funded under H2020 (RICH and RICH-2). The overall aim of the project is to improve and support the professionalisation and harmonisation of Research Infrastructures National Contact Points (NCPs) services across Europe and to contribute to the consolidation of the European research infrastructure ecosystem. RICH Europe activities have been designed to (1) raise the general standard of support to programme applicants by enhancing NCPs knowledge and capacities and building a more professionalised and collaborative NCPs community, (2) enhance the quality of knowledge of RIs stakeholders about EU RIs calls & programme and raise their awareness about the trans-national and virtual access opportunities to research infrastructures, (3) lower the entry barriers for newcomers, with a focus on widening countries, (4) mainstream RIs in HE with a special focus on Clusters and the EIC programmes, (5) foster the cooperation among RIs at European and international level, and between RIs and the local/regional socio-economic ecosystem. RICH Europe will be implemented by a consortium of 11 officially nominated NCP organizations from 10 EU Member States and 1 candidate Associated Country. The Consortium has an excellent representation of Widening countries (more than half of the partners are from Widening countries) as well as experienced and less experienced NCPs. The project, in its 7 years duration, will address four major target groups: (i) NCPs for Research Infrastructures, (ii) applicants in Horizon Europe RIs calls, (iii) Research Infrastructures and Academia, (iv) Industries and SMEs.

GENDERACTION will create an innovative policy community for the implementation of the gender priority in the European Research Area (ERA) by setting up a network of representatives appointed by national authorities in 13 Member States (MS) and Associated Countries, with 5 associate partners. The objective is to facilitate networking and exchange among more and less experienced countries to develop knowledge and build capacities, competences and know-how for gender equality and mainstreaming in research and innovation (R&I) among a variety of European and national stakeholders. The network will (1) map, monitor and assess implementation of actions in priority 4 gender equality and gender mainstreaming in national ERA roadmaps of the participating countries and benchmark them against the ERA roadmap; (2) foster exchange and mutual learning among representatives of national authorities in order to achieve policy coordination in priority 4; (3) provide interactive trainings to relevant stakeholders such as nation

Throughout the EU, the fragmentation of innovation ecosystems and the lack of interconnection between public national and regional agencies appear to be one of the main obstacles to securing support for the most promising SMEs. The GO-SME project responds to the need to provide financial support to SMEs and start-ups for the development of their innovative ideas. The aim of GO-SME is to share the best practices of participating research funding organisations (RFOs) and their mutual learning in designing programmes which would support SMEs and start-ups in an initial assessment of their innovative ideas so that they can progress to more advanced stages of innovation development. To achieve this aim, a combination of the following activities will be used: 1/learning from best practices already applied in support schemes for innovative SMEs and startups, 2/motivation of agencies from widening countries to design innovation support schemes for SMEs and start-ups, 3/cooperation in the setting up of comparable support schemes and sets of selection criteria, 4/sharing of best practices in the work with (international) experts and sharing of their pools 5/learning from best practices in providing coaching and mentoring services to innovative SMEs and start-ups 6/mutual opening up pools of coaches and mentors 7/offering of special services to running projects which will be selected as the most promising by an independent international panel. The added value of the project rests in its ambition to design national and regional programmes supporting innovative SMEs which could act as a pipeline for the EIC Accelerator and be part of the “plug-in” mechanism. At the same time, it can serve as a pilot project for a possible partnership co-funded from innovation ecosystems in the Horizon Europe programme.

The overall goal of the proposed Cofund is to strengthen the European Research Area (ERA) in maritime and marine technologies and Blue Growth. The realisation of a European research and innovation agenda needs a broad and systematic cooperation in all areas of waterborne transport, offshore activity, marine resources, maritime security, biotechnologies, desalination, offshore oil & gas, fisheries, aquaculture etc. covering all relevant maritime and marine sectors and regions for a sustainable development of the maritime sector. Research and innovation activities in these fields cannot be tackled either at national levels alone, or solely by a single sector. Coordinated actions are required for the maritime industry to strengthen Europe’s position in this important and complex economic field in a global market. The proposing consortium will organise and co-fund, together with the EU, a joint call for trans-national research projects on different thematic areas of Blue Growth. Furthermore, additional joint activities that go beyond this co-funded call are planned, in order to contribute to the national priorities as well as to the Strategic Research Agenda of JPI Oceans and WATERBORNE. With the cooperation of ERA-NET MARTEC and JPI Oceans, a broader variety of topics with a larger amount of funding will be available for the trans-national projects. Moreover, the focus of development in MarTERA is given to technologies (instead of sectors) due to their potentially large impact to a wide range of application fields. The proposal responds to the topic ERA-NET Cofund on marine technologies of the work programme 2016-2017 of the societal challenge 2 (Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research and the bio-economy) under Horizon 2020. Thereby it also contributes to the overall EU objective of building the ERA through enhanced cooperation and coordination of national research programmes.

Net4SocietyHE (N4SHE) is the proposed transnational network for Cluster 2 "Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society" (CL2) National Contact Points (NCPs) in Horizon Europe. NCPs are officially designated to advise researchers and other relevant, eligible stakeholders in their efforts to secure EU funding. N4SHE builds on Net4Society, the network for Societal Challenge 6 NCPs in H2020, and NCPs for Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities in FP7, and will further develop services and tools created by its predecessor to help NCPs to succeed in their work. Through its planned activities, N4SHE will ensure that all CL2 NCPs have the relevant knowledge and skills necessary to adequately and competently offer a consistently high-degree of professional, high-quality, tailor-made services to potential programme applicants. All nominated CL2 NCPs (including non-beneficiaries) will have access to information and capacity-building tools and events organised by the project, such as CL2 NCP info sessions, trainings, and network meetings. N4SHE will support prospective applicants in CL2, with a special focus on new stakeholders (e.g. CSOs, CCIs) and researchers from countries with lower-than-average results and participation in H2020. The project will facilitate multi-actor/multidisciplinary/international consortia-building through organisation of brokerages, bilateral meetings of project initiators and researchers from Widening countries, and via use of a partner search platform tool. N4SHE will also organise info days and proposal check events to encourage participation and development of successful proposals. To support SSH integration across Horizon Europe, N4SHE will organise SSH-themed brokerages, special trainings on the topic for NCPs, and publish an "SSH Opportunities" document, highlighting SSH research funding chances beyond flagged topics within Horizon Europe, including in missions and partnerships, and separately publicise opportunities in other EU Programmes.