This action should:

- Increase access of EIC Awardees to new partners and services with sector specific knowledge, expertise, equipment/R&I infrastructure, networks or markets;

- Enable faster transition of innovations from lab to market and scale up of EIC companies, increasing the chances for return on EIC investments; - Create synergies and further spread excellence within the European Innovation Ecosystem

- Allow EIC Ecosystem Partners access to a deal flow of top-level European innovators (i.e. EIC awardees).

The Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that will be used to monitor the action should include as a minimum:

- “Time to inform” measuring time from application of an EIC Awardee to the notification of the confirmation about lump-sum award;

- “Time to pay” the lump sum ( from reception of the service to payment);

- EIC Awardees using the lump-sum scheme (target at least 20% of eligible group).

Further KPIs can be developed in the proposal for this action and will be taken into consideration during the evaluation stage.

The cost of specialised services can constitute a barrier for researchers and innovators as these are not necessarily covered or foreseen within the (initial) EIC grant funding and their own resources are often scarce. This action aims to provide them with financial support to access those services from excellent Ecosystem partners from Europe and beyond and meet their specific needs in terms of sectorial knowledge, networks, R&I infrastructure, access to markets or business development.

The standard admissibility and eligibility conditions for CSAs as detailed in Annex 2 will apply to this call. The CSA Beneficiary must provide financial support in the form of lump sums to EIC Awardees. The financial support to EIC awardees should cover 50% of the cost of the service received from any EIC Ecosystem Partner. The CSA beneficiary will use a constantly open call for the selection of EIC awardees. The application to this call should include not more than 4 different amounts for the lump sums depending on the type of services to be covered. To determine the amounts, please consult the EIC service catalogue. The EIC Awardees having access to this support are as defined in the Glossary and for the purposes of this action include Awardees selected through calls under the EIC Pilot (2018-2020) and entities awarded a Seal of Excellence under the EIC Work Programmes under Horizon Europe. The CSA Beneficiary will launch the constantly open call for EIC Awardees to apply for a fixed amount lump sum under this action indicating a specific offer from the online catalogue for which they have received an approval from the EIC Ecosystem Partner. The Project Beneficiary will award the lump sum grants on “first-come-first-served” basis (using the electronic timestamp of the successful submission of the application) following the eligibility check and verification of the lack of double funding. It should also take care of dissemination activities around the call and set up a helpdesk to reply to the questions from the EIC Awardee. The CSA Beneficiary will be responsible for monitoring the services received by the EIC Awardees, run the quality survey directly after the end of the service and impact survey 6 months after the end of the service. Both surveys should be validated with the Agency.

The maximum size of cumulative support allocated to a recipient (or third party) under this action is EUR 60,000. The CSA Beneficiary needs to put in place a real-time reporting and monitoring system about applications received and funding awarded per EIC Awardee as well as aggregated data displayed in dashboards, including but not limited to geographical distribution, type of service, financial support received (value of the lump sums, type and geographical distribution of partners, results of the quality and impact surveys etc). The exact content of the dashboard will be defined at the beginning of the project. By the end of the project all data gathered during its implementation will be made available to the Agency. The CSA Beneficiary would need to collaborate closely for the implementation of this action with the Agency and the contractor implementing the call for Ecosystem Partners, including participation in regular meetings and making available relevant information. The CSA Beneficiary should also provide content, in collaboration with the Agency, to an “uptake and impact report” summarising the whole Ecosystem Partnership activity of the EIC. The CSA Beneficiary must ensure sound financial management and applicants must specify in their proposals how the management and control of this financial support will be organised in an effective and efficient way, including avoidance of any abuse. If admissible and eligible, the proposals for the current Coordination and Support Actions will be evaluated and ranked against the criteria as descried in Annex 2. The funding rate of the CSA is 100% of the eligible costs. At least 75% (EUR 3.4 million) of the total budget to be funded by the EIC must be allocated to financial support to third parties (the EIC Awardees). An effective duration of around 2-3 years would enable the project to achieve the desired objectives.

Type of action: Coordination and Support Action (CSA). The conditions are described in Annex 2.

Number of projects expected to be funded: 1

Budget: EUR 4.5 million. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts if duly justified. As stated above, out of this amount approximately EUR 1.5 million will be allocated to services provided by EIT KICs. The final amount will depend on the demand for services from EIC Awardees.