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
The objective is to deploy and operate an EU online marketplace for cloud and edge services. The marketplace should be the single point of access for trusted services, notably cloud and edge services, building blocks deployed under the Common Services Platform and more generally any software and data processing services developed under EU programmes. It should as well complement the AI-on-demand platform, in providing access to the necessary cloud services. By facilitating access to these services for crucial EU sectors, the catalogue of curated services will improve the EU’s open strategic autonomy. This will ensure that the digital transformation of the economy is undertaken on the basis of secure, fair, inclusive and resource-efficient infrastructures and services.
Detailed Call Description
The chosen project shall:
- Define clear rules for the open, fair and transparent functioning of the marketplace, including how these would be guaranteed in the long term through an appropriate governance structure;
- Deploy the technical infrastructure of the marketplace platform, with strong customer focus, user-friendliness, and inclusion and equality principles;
- Ensure that the marketplace is built over the cloud-to-edge middleware platform;
- Operate the platform according to security, energy and resource efficiency, data protection, ethical standards and portability requirements;
- Ensure the integration of state-of-the-art identity and access management services on the marketplace platform to support its operations;
- Design a curation/vetting process for services offered on the marketplace, notably for sector-specific services in regulated sectors (e.g. health, energy, finance…); these services should, inter alia, include the cloud-to-edge services and middleware, the Artificial Intelligence tools, as well as building blocks deployed under the Common Services Platform.
- Where other marketplaces exist, such as marketplaces already developed in some Member States or services platforms addressing specific areas (such as the AI-on-demand platform), this marketplace will put in place the required mechanisms to offer a seamless and integrated end-user experience.
- Adopt the appropriate governance to ensure the proper supervision of the marketplace by all relevant stakeholders, fostering interconnections with similar marketplaces and service catalogues that exist in some Member States; etc. (see page 10-11 of the call document)
Where possible, open source software should be used for the development of the marketplace, notably to demonstrate transparency, vendor- independence and neutrality in the offering of services on the platform.
In order to foster common building blocks, the project supported under this action will liaise with those supported by the Data Spaces Support Centre in the areas of data spaces, pool data provision, demand for the cloud, the promotion of competitive and seamless access and use of cloud infrastructures and services.
Targeted stakeholders: European cloud providers, public entities, SMEs, telecommunication companies, IoT
and edge providers, software companies, IT professional service companies, security companies, green service companies and providers and users of Common Data Spaces.
Call Total Budget
Financing percentage by EU or other bodies / Level of Subsidy or Loan
Simple Grants: 50%
Thematic Categories
- Enlargement
- Information Technology
- Research, Technological Development and Innovation
- Telecommunications
Eligibility for Participation
- Central Government
- Chambers
- Large Enterprises
- Local Authorities
- Other Beneficiaries
- Private Bodies
- Services Providers
- 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)
- 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 (list of countries) or countries which are in ongoing negotiations for an association agreement and where the agreement enters into force before grant signature.
For the consortium composition see the details of the specific topic, in the Call document.
Call Opening Date
Call Closing Date
National Contact Point(s)
It will be announced soon.
(Publish Date: 18/11/2021-for internal use only)