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The ¹û¶³´«Ã½ Horizon Europe Seed Fund does not fund proposals which lead to applications to the following EU calls:

• ERC Starting Grant;
• ERC Consolidator Grant;
• ERC Advanced Grant;
• ERC Proof of Concept Grant following on from an ERC Starting, Consolidator or Advanced Grant.

These calls are for individual Principal Investigators and do not fund consortia, hence they are outside the scope of the Seed Fund.

These ineligible calls apply to all 3 Routes noted below.

Route 1 aims to facilitate collaborations between ¹û¶³´«Ã½ academics and their counterparts based at institutions eligible for Horizon Europe funding in order to pump-prime one or more applications to Horizon Europe calls. The collaborators may be either known or unknown to the ¹û¶³´«Ã½ applicant at the time of the application, provided the proposed collaborators are aware of and endorse the Seed Fund application.

Applicants must have concrete plans to apply to one or more Horizon Europe calls and the call(s) must be identified, giving the Call name and Call ID in the Seed Fund application.

Eligible calls

All calls from the following funding schemes are eligible for these purposes:

• MSCA;
• Research Infrastructures;
• Pillar 2;
• Pillar 3;
• WIDERA.

Additionally, the ERC Synergy Grant, the ERC Proof of Concept following on from an ERC Synergy Grant and the ERC Plus Grants are also eligible funding calls.

The Horizon Europe calls may be from either adopted (i.e. confirmed/ final) Work Programmes such as the or, where available, from draft Work Programmes, such as those published on the . Any draft Work Programmes are subject to change.

All applicants to the Seed Fund, including the ¹û¶³´«Ã½ applicant, must be eligible to apply to their selected Horizon Europe call(s).

Please note the ineligible calls in the tab above.

Further requirements

Applicants under Route 1 should be able to justify as part of their Seed Fund application in what ways the award is going to pump-prime their application(s) to the identified Horizon Europe call(s). Applications to the latter call(s) should then include all of the Seed Fund collaborator(s).

Route 2 aims to facilitate the in-person attendance of ¹û¶³´«Ã½ applicants at Brokerage Events which have the primary aim of identifying partners to jointly apply with to Horizon Europe calls listed under the 'Eligible calls' under 'Route 1: Collaborations' (see tab above).

Examples of eligible Brokerage Events include those organised by the European Commission for each of the six Clusters under Pillar 2; WIDERA; Research Infrastructures and MSCA. These events may be found on the (under Upcoming Info Days). The Info Days are eligible for funding to attend in-person as long as they also include one or more Brokerage Events the applicant(s) intend to attend. The applicant(s)' main purpose for attending should be to make connections to apply jointly to one or more of the topics/calls for discussion at the Brokerage Event(s).

Other Brokerage Events where the applicant(s)' primary purpose for attending is to make connections to jointly apply to an eligible Horizon Europe Cluster/topic/call (see the 'Eligible calls' under 'Route 1: Collaborations') may also be eligible as long as the targeted Horizon Europe Cluster/topic/call is clear from the event description. The eligibility of such events will be assessed on a case-by-case basis. The Seed Fund application should specify in as much detail as possible the Horizon Europe Cluster/ topic/ call the event will lead to applying to.

Other events like meetings, conferences, seminars, workshops, general networking are ineligible under this Route.

Prospective attendees at Brokerage Events may consider applying to Horizon Europe calls in either a coordinator or a (EU-funded) consortium member capacity.

The in-person attendance of attendees from other institutions/ organisations may also be funded provided that the application demonstrates all of the below:

1. No alternative funding is available for their attendance from other sources;
2. There are concrete plans for their participation in the follow-on Horizon Europe proposal;
3. Their attendance is necessary at the Brokerage Event(s).

Route 3 provides funding to commission consultancy services to develop Horizon Europe proposal(s). As with Route 1, applicants must identify the Horizon Europe call(s) as part of their Seed Fund application. Eligible Horizon Europe calls are those identified under 'Route 1: Collaborations'.

Applicants under Route 3 should be able to justify as part of their Seed Fund application the need for a consultancy service to develop the Horizon Europe proposal and its added value for applying and securing a Horizon Europe project.

The definition of 'Consultancy' may be extended, on a case-by-case basis, to refer to a legal entity (such as an organisation/ institution) offering a comparable service which consists of developing the proposal for a specified fee.