CSA on access to European spaceports
HORIZON Coordination and Support Actions
Basic Information
- Identifier
- HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-SPACE-11
- Programme
- SPACE-HADEA
- Programme Period
- 2021 - 2027
- Status
- Closed (31094503)
- Opening Date
- May 22, 2025
- Deadline
- September 25, 2025
- Deadline Model
- single-stage
- Budget
- €10,000,000
- Min Grant Amount
- €10,000,000
- Max Grant Amount
- €10,000,000
- Expected Number of Grants
- 1
- Keywords
- HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-SPACE-11HORIZON-CL4-2025-02
Description
Common regulatory practices and guidelines will facilitate access to European spaceports and increase their attractiveness for European launch systems. The action is expected to contribute to the following outcomes:
- Awareness of stakeholders on practices and regulations;
- A comprehensive overview of technical challenges to be addressed in terms of guidelines and best practices;
- An assessment of the paths for the European spaceports regulations, guidelines and best practices to support safe and sustainable launch operations;
- An identification of the benefits for the European space market development, for European sovereignty as well as for international cooperation.
- Standards and guidelines should contribute to ease to launching from various spaceports.
This coordination and support action will contribute to the expected outcomes by:
- Assessing best practices, standards and guidelines for launch operations from European spaceports, taking into account experiences from worldwide existing spaceports.
- Proposing a set of common regulatory practices and guidelines for European Spaceports and evaluating their impact on the launch operations.
- Involving European stakeholders participating in the development of safety equipment with the aim to strengthen the spaceports interoperability with their technological solutions.
In this topic, the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content should be addressed only if relevant in relation to the objectives of the research effort.
Destination & Scope
Eligibility & Conditions
General conditions
1. Admissibility Conditions: Proposal page limit and layout
2. Eligible Countries
described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes.
A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.
3. Other Eligible Conditions
In order to achieve the expected outcomes, and safeguard the Union’s strategic assets, interests, autonomy, or security, namely it is important to avoid a situation of technological dependency on a non-EU source, in a global context that requires the EU to take action to build on its strengths, and to carefully assess and address any strategic weaknesses, vulnerabilities and high-risk dependencies which put at risk the attainment of its ambitions, participation is limited to legal entities established in Member States, Norway, Iceland and the other Associated Countries. Proposals including entities established in countries outside the scope specified in the call/topic/action will be ineligible.
If projects use satellite-based earth observation, positioning, navigation and/or related timing data and services, beneficiaries must make use of Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS (other data and services may additionally be used).
described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes.
4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion
described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes.
5a. Evaluation and award: Award criteria, scoring and thresholds
The granting authority can fund a maximum of one project.
are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes.
5b. Evaluation and award: Submission and evaluation processes
are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual.
5c. Evaluation and award: Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement
described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes.
6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants
Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum as defined in the Decision of 7 July 2021 authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025). [[This decision is available on the Funding and Tenders Portal, in the reference documents section for Horizon Europe, under ‘Simplified costs decisions’ or through this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/ls-decision_he_en.pdf]].
described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes.
Specific conditions
described in the specific topic of the Work Programme.
Application and evaluation forms and model grant agreement (MGA):
Application form templates — the application form specific to this call is available in the Submission System
Standard application form (HE CSA)
Evaluation form templates — will be used with the necessary adaptations
Standard evaluation form (HE CSA)
Guidance
Model Grant Agreements (MGA)
Call-specific instructions
Additional documents:
HE Main Work Programme 2025 – 1. General Introduction
HE Main Work Programme 2025 – 7. Digital, Industry and Space
HE Main Work Programme 2025 – 14. General Annexes
HE Framework Programme 2021/695
HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764
EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509
Decision authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme
Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment
EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement
Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual
Support & Resources
Online Manual is your guide on the procedures from proposal submission to managing your grant.
Horizon Europe Programme Guide contains the detailed guidance to the structure, budget and political priorities of Horizon Europe.
Funding & Tenders Portal FAQ – find the answers to most frequently asked questions on submission of proposals, evaluation and grant management.
Research Enquiry Service – ask questions about any aspect of European research in general and the EU Research Framework Programmes in particular.
National Contact Points (NCPs) – get guidance, practical information and assistance on participation in Horizon Europe. There are also NCPs in many non-EU and non-associated countries (‘third-countries’).
Enterprise Europe Network – contact your EEN national contact for advice to businesses with special focus on SMEs. The support includes guidance on the EU research funding.
IT Helpdesk – contact the Funding & Tenders Portal IT helpdesk for questions such as forgotten passwords, access rights and roles, technical aspects of submission of proposals, etc.
European IPR Helpdesk assists you on intellectual property issues.
CEN-CENELEC Research Helpdesk and ETSI Research Helpdesk – the European Standards Organisations advise you how to tackle standardisation in your project proposal.
The European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for their recruitment – consult the general principles and requirements specifying the roles, responsibilities and entitlements of researchers, employers and funders of researchers.
Partner Search help you find a partner organisation for your proposal.
Latest Updates
The call HORIZON-CL4-2025-02 closed on the 25/09/2025.
93 proposals have been submitted.
The breakdown per topic is:
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-11: 7 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-12: 9 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-13: 3 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-21: 5 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-22: 3 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-23: 3 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-24: 11 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-31: 20 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-32: 7 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-41: 2 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-42: 2 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-43: 2 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-44: 1 proposal
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-45: 4 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-46: 5 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-71: 1 proposal
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-72: 3 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-73: 2 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-74: 2 proposals
·HORIZON-CL4-2025-02-81: 1 proposal
Evaluation results are expected to be communicated at the latest on 25 February 2026.
Please note that due to a technical issue, during the first days of publication of this call, the topic page did not display the description of the corresponding destination. This problem is now solved. In addition to the information published in the topic page, you can always find a full description of the destination 5 “Open strategic autonomy in developing, deploying and using global space-based infrastructures, services, applications and data” that is relevant for the call in the Work Programme 2025 part for “Digital, Industry and Space”. Please select from the work programme the destination relevant to your topic and take into account the description and expected impacts of that destination for the preparation of your proposal.