The Commission has opened a call for proposals to to organise and operate an EGNOS/GALILEO award scheme.

The European Commission has launched a call for proposals aiming to contribute to the prizes and incubation support provided by the operation of a prize awarding mechanism and incubation, for innovative applications based on the EU GNSS technology (EGNOS and GALILEO) that will promote industrial innovation and the uptake of high-technologies across Europe. The beneficiary/ies of this grant will mobilise other entities to co-fund both prizes and incubation support.

The deadline for electronic submission  of the calls for the Galileo-EGNOS award scheme is  19 October 2016 at 12.00 (Brussels time).

Background and objective of the call

The Galileo programme is Europe’s initiative for a state-of-the-art GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) infrastructure, providing a highly accurate, guaranteed global positioning service specifically designed for civilian purposes. While providing autonomous navigation and positioning services, Galileo will assure interoperability with the Global Positioning System (GPS) – USA and Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) – Russia, the two other already deployed global satellite navigation systems as well as with Beidou, the global Chinese GNSS system.

From experience on the GNSS as well as on other innovative technologies, the prize-winning concept is an effective tool to prompt generation of new ideas ready to spin-off and/or to go into market introduction, as well as to provide visibility and crucial seed financing to prize winners. EU funding may also play a key ‘signalling’ role in attracting further private financing to the innovative ventures.

This prize-award scheme and incubation/acceleration support intends to foster the emergence of new applications based on GALILEO/EGNOS and also to support the EU industry developing downstream applications based on EU GNSS technologies & programmes (EGNOS/GALILEO). The awards should promote the visibility of the two flagship projects of the Union, and generate a flow of viable projects to be further incubated and accelerated in view of actual commercial exploitation.

The European Commission therefore wishes to award a grant to an organization, or a consortium, that takes the action to organise and operate an EGNOS/GALILEO award and incubation scheme. The maximum duration of projects is 36 months.

Actions to be supported

The kind of activities to be supported are:

• Organisation and management of a yearly prize-awarding competition including publication of calls for ideas generating applications from entrepreneurs, evaluation by experts of ideas and awarding prizes
• Supporting incubation and acceleration of innovative product/services to enable their development and entry into the market.
• Fund raising to match the Commission grant
• Dissemination ‘inbound’, i.e. to expand the number of innovative ideas submitted every year into the GALILEO prize-awarding competition
• Dissemination ‘outbound’, i.e. obtain adequate visibility within the worldwide GNSS industry to promote the competition, its participants and winners
• Monitoring prize winners and participants

Organisations eligibility and budget

This call is open to any legal bodies or institutes with legal status established in an EU country, Norway or Switzerland.

The total budget allocated for the co-financing of the project is estimated at €1 500 000.

Maximum EU financing rate of eligible costs: the contribution will be up to 70% of the eligible costs for management and incubation costs and up to 60% of the total eligible costs for prizes. Further information is set out in section 4 of the call for proposals.

More information can be found on DG Growth’s website.