There are seven forthcoming maritime Horizon Europe competitions with a combined budget available of over €60m.

The UK Government’s preference is to associate to the Horizon Europe programme, so that funding to UK participants would be directly from the EU, and active negotiations are ongoing. Regardless of the outcome of those negotiations all UK organisations will remain fully eligible to participate in the maritime competitions.

In the twelve months since it opened, 31 UK organisations have received grants from the Horizon Europe Guarantee to fund their participation in internationally collaborative maritime projects. UK organisations have a success rate of 33% over all in transport competitions in Horizon Europe – this is higher than the average over all countries which stands at 28%.

There is also a Horizon Europe programme specifically for SMEs called the EIC Accelerator. This supports individual Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to develop and scaleup game-changing innovations. The technology component of your innovation must have already been tested and validated in a laboratory or other relevant environment (i.e., at least Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5/6 or higher). UK entities are eligible to apply for ‘grant only’ funding (max. €2.5million, eligible costs are reimbursed up to a maximum of 70%.) to cover maturing the innovation to TRL8.  Support and advice on the EIC Accelerator is provided by the Innovate UK EDGE team who can also support innovative UK SMEs in other ways too.   

 For further information and support, contact Louise Mothersole, Horizon Europe UK National Contact Point for Mobility, on louise.mothersole@iuk.ukri.org