Programme Category
Programme Name
Programme Description
Horizon Europe is the European Union (EU) funding programme for the period 2021 – 2027, which targets the sectors of research and innovation. The programme’s budget is around € 95.5 billion, of which € 5.4 billion is from NextGenerationEU to stimulate recovery and strengthen the EU’s resilience in the future, and € 4.5 billion is additional aid.
Identifier Code
Call
Summary
The continuous expansion of EU legislation, both in digital domains (such as GDPR, the Open Data Directive, the Data Governance Act, the AI Act, and the Data Act) and non-digital fields (such as the Green Deal, due diligence, healthcare, and transport), is creating increasing challenges for businesses and professionals to remain compliant. The complexity and growing volume of reporting obligations also make it difficult for regulators to enforce laws and for organisations to comply effectively, highlighting the need for innovative solutions to simplify compliance processes and strengthen competitiveness within the EU.
A further challenge arises from the limitations of real-world data, including issues of availability, confidentiality, and bias. Synthetic data is becoming an essential tool to address these shortcomings by improving data quality, diversity, and representativeness, thereby supporting AI-driven innovation and regulatory compliance. In this context, actions should also cover aspects such as cybersecurity, interoperability, reproducibility, and standardisation, and where relevant, collaborate with related initiatives to facilitate secure and effective data sharing across platforms and sectors. Moreover, comprehensive user training and support must be provided, involving stakeholders both inside and outside projects, to ensure adaptability and scalability in response to evolving regulations and diverse organisational needs. Proposals should demonstrate how they address the real needs of users and stakeholders, linking training and support to clear and measurable progress indicators.
Detailed Call Description
The proposal should clearly state (in the abstract and in the introduction) which of the following three areas it addresses. A proposal can address more than one area, but it should indicate one of them as the main focus of the proposal, and it will be evaluated accordingly under that area.
- Area 1: Actions to develop advanced compliance technology integrating AI, cybersecurity, language technologies, and privacy preservation. This framework could include the creation of NLP-driven semantic analysis tools for deciphering complex legal texts and translating them into clear compliance tasks, energy-efficient neuromorphic approaches and mechanisms for optimising massive data operations, or machine learning algorithms trained on historical data to predict and mitigate potential compliance violations. With the capability to detect changes in EU legislation, these advanced AI systems and analytics tools will provide deep insights into compliance performance, risk management, and help forecast upcoming regulatory trends to strategically prepare for future requirements. For usability, it is also important that the tools can be integrated with the organisation’s existing processes and systems.
- Area 2: Actions to ensure auto-compliance of data transactions and data spaces with applicable regulation (e.g. data and sectoral legislation). Actions in this area should anticipate compliance tasks within the context of Common European Data Spaces and coordinate with them as necessary. Actions in this area are expected to develop automatic or semi-automatic tools that analyse and take into account the specific architecture, governance model, exchange mechanisms, tools, data types, identity management, smart contracting, user policies and other user needs or operational features of the actual data spaces, liaising with and building on other actions working in this area, in particular the Data Spaces Support Centre.
- Area 3: Actions to generate, manage and leverage synthetic data in order to improve data quality, availability, representativity, fitness for purpose and compliance. The actions should in particular address the inherent shortcomings of real world data that would necessitate synthetic data (e.g. data availability, confidentiality, privacy protection, enhancing quality, diversity, representativeness, bias). Additionally, actions may target generating synthetic data for sparse or unusual domains, integrating synthetic and real data effectively, or advancing technological capabilities in generative models and simulation-based approaches to drive synthetic data generation forward and/or addressing or modelling rare events and complex dynamic systems. All actions under this Area are expected to address the evaluation, validation and benchmarking of synthetic data to ensure fitness for purpose and safe, ethical and compliant use of synthetic data, including the analysis and mitigation of biases inherited from the original data or introduced by the synthetic data generation process. For these purposes, collaboration with simulation/digital twins actions could be explored.
Call Total Budget
Financing percentage by EU or other bodies / Level of Subsidy or Loan
70%
Expected EU contribution per project: between €7.00 and €9.00 million.
Thematic Categories
- Information and Communication Technologies
- Information Technology
- Research, Technological Development and Innovation
- Telecommunications
Eligibility for Participation
- Businesses
- Educational Institutions
- Large Enterprises
- NGOs
- Other Beneficiaries
- Private Bodies
- Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions
- Semi-governmental organisations
- Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)
Eligibility For Participation Notes
A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects.
Participation is limited to legal entities established in Member States, Iceland and Norway, associated countries and OECD countries.
In order to guarantee the protection of the strategic interests of the Union and its Member States, entities established in an eligible country listed above, but which are directly or indirectly controlled by a non-eligible country or by a non-eligible country entity, shall not participate in the action.
Call Opening Date
Call Closing Date
National Contact Point(s)
Research and Innovation Foundation
29a Andrea Michalakopoulou, 1075 Nicosia,
P.B. 23422, 1683 Nicosia
Telephone: +357 22205000
Fax: +357 22205001
Email: support@research.org.cy
Website: https://www.research.org.cy/en/
Persons to Contact:
Dr Angelos Ntantos
Scientific Officer
Email: antantos@research.org.cy
Mr. George Christou
Scientific Officer
Email: gchristou@research.org.cy