Call for proposals H2020 Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation - Twinning

The European Commission has published a new call for proposals under the 2014-2015 work programme Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation of the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation - Horizon 2020. The closing date for applications is December 2, 2014. The Call for Twinning - H2020-TWINN-2015 has a budget of € 64,120,000. The deadline for this call is likely to be extended and also a slight increase of the call budget is planned. For more detailed information and documents please click here.

The specific challenge of the call is to address networking gaps and deficiencies between the research institutions of the low performing Member States and regions and internationally-leading counterparts at EU level. Driven by the quest for excellence, research intensive institutions tend to collaborate increasingly in closed groups, producing a crowding-out effect for a large number of promising institutions. This is the challenge that a specific Twinning action will try to address.

Despite serious efforts deployed at national and European level, the European Union sees significant internal disparities in terms of research and innovation performance as also identified in the Innovation Union Scoreboard. These trends are further exacerbated by the continuing severe financial crisis, and the subsequent adverse effects on public research and innovation budgets. Also, there is significant evidence pointing to the fact that the pathway to economic growth and competitiveness is strongly connected to the scaling up of investment in research and innovation. In order to address these challenges, Horizon 2020 introduces specific measures for spreading excellence and widening participation. These measures are targeted at low-performing Member States in terms of research and innovation, and they will be implemented by the Member States most in need of the new Cohesion policy for the 2014-2020 programming period.