Programme Category
Programme Name
Programme Description
Digital Europe Programme is the first EU programme that aims to accelerate the recovery and drive the digital transformation of Europe.
Worth €7.6 billion (in current prices), the Programme is a part of the next long-term EU budget, (the Multiannual Financial Framework), and it covers 2021 to 2027. It will provide funding for projects in five crucial areas: supercomputing, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, advanced digital skills, and ensuring the wide use of digital technologies across the economy and society.
The Programme is fine-tuned to fill the gap between the research of digital technologies and their deployment, and to bring the results of research to the market – for the benefit of Europe’s citizens and businesses, and in particular SMEs. Investments under the Digital Europe programme supports the Union’s twin objectives of a green transition and digital transformation and strengthens the Union’s resilience and strategic autonomy.
Identifier Code
Call
Summary
This initiative will support up to three data-collection projects, with around 3 million co-funding from Digital Europe each, focused on manufacturing use cases to unlock advanced AI models, for example, predictive maintenance, process automation, supply chain management, product design and development and sustainability in production, and increase productivity in industrial environments such as purchases, logistics, resource planning and production halls. These projects aim to collect massive, high-quality data from real industrial environments, ensuring proper labelling where relevant, that could be used to train or finetune generative AI models for the manufacturing sector. The data collection has to be relevant for developing AI applications that can significantly benefit major EU manufacturing sectors (such as automotive, chemical, aeronautics and energy-intensive industries). The project proposal has to clearly identify the target sectors, the stakeholders, and have preliminary agreements about the intended data exchange.
Detailed Call Description
The data-collection projects will develop both technical and business solutions to enable authorized AI developers to have direct or indirect data access and utilize these large datasets while fully respecting the data holders’ control over their data.
Each data-collection project should propose clear use cases to ensure alignment with real-world needs and challenges. Ideally, the AI developers interested in using such data should be already identified in the proposal.
The proposal will also ensure technical and legal solutions to make the generated datasets available to users of AI Factories. This will also enable AI Factories to leverage these datasets for the development of AI applications. To this extent, the inclusion of AI Factories in the project will be considered an advantage.
Consortia are encouraged to use data intermediaries, as outlined in Chapter III of the Data Governance Act, or other appropriate mechanisms to manage the secure access to and processing of these datasets.
The initiative must also work in close partnership with the Data Spaces Support Centre to ensure alignment and interoperability with the broader ecosystem of data spaces implemented with the support of the Digital Europe Programme. Additionally, the action must coordinate with AI Factories to ensure that the datasets generated can be effectively used in conjunction with data already available facilitating in this way collaborative approaches for the development of advanced AI models.
Considering financial sustainability from the outset is crucial in the development of Common European Data Spaces to ensure their long-term viability and effectiveness. By establishing a sound financial model, developers can secure the resources necessary to adapt to evolving technological landscapes and user needs, ensuring that data spaces remain robust and beneficial over time.
Call Total Budget
Financing percentage by EU or other bodies / Level of Subsidy or Loan
The funding rate is for SME Support Actions 50% and 75% (for SMEs).
Project budget (requested grant amount) is between €3.000.000 and €3.500.000 per project. The grant awarded may be lower than the amount requested.
The grant will be a budget-based mixed actual cost grant (actual costs, with unit cost and flat-rate elements). This means that it will reimburse ONLY certain types of costs (eligible costs) and costs that were actually incurred for your project (NOT the budgeted costs).
Thematic Categories
- Information and Communication Technologies
- Information Technology
- Processing
- Research, Technological Development and Innovation
- Small-Medium Enterprises and Competitiveness
Eligibility for Participation
- Associations
- Businesses
- Educational Institutions
- Large Enterprises
- Legal Entities
- Local Authorities
- NGOs
- Other Beneficiaries
- Private Bodies
- Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions
- Semi-governmental organisations
- Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)
- State-owned Enterprises
Eligibility For Participation Notes
In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must be legal entities (public or private bodies) established in EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs)) or listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Digital Europe Programme (list of participating countries).
Consortium composition
Proposals must be submitted by: minimum 3 independent applicants (beneficiaries; not affiliated entities) from 3 different eligible countries
Targeted stakeholders: All entities, with a focus on manufacturing SMEs and mid-caps, IT companies and integrators. The consortium will include data suppliers, data users, as well as any other organisation (such as data brokers, data stewards, data integrators, trusted data intermediaries) participating in data aggregation and governance activities.
Call Opening Date
Call Closing Date
National Contact Point(s)
Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy
Directorate of Research and Innovation
Eleana Gabriel
Telephone: +357 22 691918
Email: egabriel@dmrid.gov.cy