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.

This objective will support projects testing digital solutions for transmitting information relevant for compliance with EU legislation (e.g. regulations on environmental issues) and automate the compliance process for a number of pilot use cases. These projects will target regulatory reporting requirements, from aggregate data (e.g., company balance sheets) to detailed data (e.g., transactions, events, and product registrations). The aim is to leverage advanced technologies, including data capturing technologies, automatic transmission, analysis, cloud storage, and encryption, to ensure data security, confidentiality, and regulatory compliance. The strong focus should be given to privacy-preserving technologies to ensure trust between the reporting entity and regulatory authorities, safeguarding data confidentiality while enabling secure and efficient compliance processes.

Additionally, the projects will identify burdensome administrative challenges in the selected sectors that could be addressed by automated data-driven solutions, while close collaboration with reporting entities will be essential to enable direct communication with regulatory agencies for automated updates and ensure compliance with evolving regulations. The approach will prioritize access controls and audit trails to enhance transparency and reduce the risk of non-compliance and penalties. Furthermore, the projects could incorporate the European Digital Identity Wallet, when available, to securely identify individuals and legal entities in data spaces, alongside trust services like electronic seals and ledgers.

50%

• Agriculture - Food
• Energy
• Environment and Climate Change
• Health
• Industry
• Information and Communication Technologies
• Information Technology
• Justice - Security
• Processing
• Research, Technological Development and Innovation
• Small-Medium Enterprises and Competitiveness

• Associations
• Businesses
• Central Government
• Educational Institutions
• Farmers, Agriculturalists
• Large Enterprises
• Legal Entities
• Legal Entities under Public Law
• Private Bodies
• Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions
• Semi-governmental organisations
• Services Providers
• Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)
• State-owned Enterprises

In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:

• be legal entities (public or private bodies)
• be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
  • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
  • non-EU countries:
    • listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Digital Europe Programme

Beneficiaries and affiliated entities must register in the Participant Register — before submitting the proposal — and will have to be validated by the Central Validation Service (REA Validation). For the validation, they will be requested to upload documents showing legal status and origin.

Other entities may participate in other consortium roles, such as associated partners, subcontractors, third parties giving in-kind contributions, etc (see section 13 of the call document).

Entities that are assessed as high-risk suppliers of mobile network communication equipment (and any entities they own or control) are not eligible to participate in any capacity, including as beneficiaries, affiliated entities, associated partners, third parties giving in-kind contributions, subcontractors or recipients of financial support to third parties (if any).

Natural persons — Natural persons are NOT eligible (with the exception of self employed persons, i.e. sole traders, where the company does not have legal personality separate from that of the natural person).

International organisations — International organisations are NOT eligible, unless they are International organisations of European Interest within the meaning of Article 2 of the Digital Europe Regulation (i.e. international organisations the majority of whose members are Member States or whose headquarters are in a Member State).

Entities without legal personality — Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees for the protection of the EU financial interests equivalent to that offered by legal persons.

EU bodies — EU bodies (with the exception of the European Commission Joint Research Centre) can NOT be part of the consortium.

Associations and interest groupings — Entities composed of members may participate as ‘sole beneficiaries’ or ‘beneficiaries without legal personality’.

Targeted stakeholders:

National and EU authorities (as data users)/ regulatory agencies public and private entities, businesses, farmers, etc/providers of compliance data (data holders), data sharing organisations, universities.

Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy
Directorate of Research and Innovation

Eleana Gabriel
Telephone: +357 22 691918
Email: egabriel@dmrid.gov.cy

https://european-union.europa.eu/contact-eu/write-us_en

• Funding & Tenders
• Call document