This Call is a grant type of action for for-profit SMEs’ (EU Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC) in the EU – a single SME or in a consortium. This is a relevant change compared to last year: now only SMEs are eligible.

Technology Readiness Level

Presented proposals must aim to establish new products, services, business models or processes within the blue economy value chains. For example, activities can cover trials, prototyping, validation, demonstration and testing in real environmental conditions, and market replication. All in all, a proposal for this topic should present a project with a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) between 6 and 8, that is, proposals for this call should talk about market readiness.

Funding available

The Blue Economy Window call has a budget of 20M euros to invest in grants. The Call offers applicants financial support to their project through a 70% co-funding structure. In general, the expected contribution requested from applicants ranges between €700,000 and €2,500,000.

Deadline

This Call works under a single-stage application model, final deadline is scheduled for the 16^th of February of 2021 (17:00:00 Brussels time).

Thematically, the Blue Economy Window Call will be about compatibility with the EU Green Deal. Relevant areas for the blue economy window call include the blue bioeconomy, digital transformation of ocean and coastal activities, renewable energy, enabling technologies, cleaner shipping, pollution monitoring or sustainable tourism.

This call will be also about investment. Thus, to distribute funding, the EU Commission will not only have into account the relevance of the proposal and the technology readiness level, but also the capabilities of the management team and its ability to work with innovation, stablish a solid path to market, and attract and orient investment -investors and potential customers- to maximise the impact of the proposal.

There will be changes in the evaluation process in the Call for February 2021. The evaluation will now be a two-step process: proposal evaluation and remote interviews.

A new step in the evaluation process: the pitch

There will be a new extra step in the evaluation process: a 10-minute PITCH presentation followed by a 20-minute Q&A.

After submission, company representatives from selected proposals (Step 1) will be invited to a remote Jury Panel Interview that can take place from the 26th to the 30th of April of 2021. The panel will count with 5 experts, who will evaluate the pitch presentation.

New scoring approach

There will be a new approach to the award criteria. First, Steps 1 and 2 will receive its own individual scores out of 15, then, maximum combined score possible is 30. The threshold for Step 1 will be 10 points and the overall threshold for steps 1 and 2 will be 21 points.

That is, to pass to the interview step (Step 2) a proposal must get at least 10 points in Step 1. For more information about evaluation, eligibility and award criteria check this document.