FAQ

• The first open call is now closed and the selected projects are described at https://earashi.eu/open-call-1-selected-projects/.
• The second (and last) open call opens on September 29, 2023. It will close on December 20, 2023 at 5:00 PM CET (Brussels time)

All the open call documents are available online on the website on the Open call page: https://earashi.eu/open-calls/

The submission is performed through the application page https://earashi.eu/application/

Submission guidelines (handbook, video) will be available on the website to guide the applicants through the registration and submission phase.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact an EARASHI partner in order to get more information on EARASHI open call (scope and challenges) and offer, both technical building blocks and coaching services, through EARASHI members:

• Information about EARASHI offer, how to create an eligible proposal prior to submission, to get advice and recommendation.
• EARASHI partners support applicants and can serve as a point of contact for the applicants during the creation of the proposal until the closure of the call.
• A series of webinars will be proposed in the following weeks to provide more insights on EARASHI open call context and application requests, etc. The programme will be available on the website.
• Pitch video guidelines, the Building Blocks presentation, Cybersecurity webinars are available on the website at https://earashi.eu/our-events/ (recorded from open call 1 sessions).

EARASHI can also be contacted through its helpdesk info@earashi.eu that will ensure that the applicant is put in relation with the right partner and gets answers to its demand.

For EARASHI, proposals must be submitted through our dedicated application portal:

Please submit at https://earashi.eu/application/

EARASHI proposal includes three documents: a pdf file describing the proposal, a recorded pitch for the business description and an Eco-design questionnaire. Templates and Guidelines are available on the application page.

Submission guidelines (handbook, video) will be available on the website to guide the applicants through the registration and submission phase.

Yes. If you discover an error in your application, you can at any time submit a new version of your proposal in our portal – provided the call deadline has not expired. Only the last version received before the call deadline will be considered in the evaluation.

The innovative companies (applicant) should contact an EARASHI partner, either on a geographical basis or according to the specific expertise:

• Partners involved in EARASHI network as listed at: https://earashi.eu/our-network/
• Partners’ technical expertise are detailed in the Building Block catalogue, available at https://earashi.eu/building-blocks/
• A series of webinars will be proposed in the following weeks to provide more insights on EARASHI open call context and application requests, Pitch video guidelines, etc. The programme will be available on the website.

Legal entities established in the following countries are eligible to receive funding through this Open Call:

• Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU), including their overseas territories
• The HORIZON EUROPE Associated Countries

The EU Associated Countries participate in Horizon 2020 under the same conditions as the EU Member States. The list with all eligible Associated Countries can be found here:

https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/common/guidance/list-3rd-country-participation_horizon-euratom_en.pdf

Legal entities established in any other country or region cannot receive funding in this open call.

No, UK companies cannot submit a proposal and receive cascade funding.

No, Swiss companies cannot submit a proposal and receive cascade funding.

No, Hungarian Public Trust entities cannot receive cascade funding!

“Where the Commission implements the Union budget in direct or indirect management pursuant to of Article 62(1) points (a) and (c), of Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2018/1046, no legal commitments shall be entered into with any public interest trust established on the basis of the Hungarian Act IX of 2021 or any entity maintained by such a public interest trust.”

EARASHI is targeting two types of European companies:

• Startup

In EARASHI context, a start-up is a tech-oriented company. At the time of the open call closure (12/05/2023)

• It should employ less than 10 people (but more than 2 full time equivalent staff).
• It has operated for less than three years.
• It has attracted more than €50k early stage private sector investment or has demonstrable sales growth over 50% pa.
• Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

A legal entity will be considered an SME if it complies with the European Commission’s definition). The main factors defining an enterprise as an SME are (i) staff headcount and (ii) either turnover or balance sheet total, as specified in the table below:

Further requirements on the European Commission’s SME definition can be found at:
https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/smes/sme-definition_en

By essence, Midcaps^[1] are not entitled to receive Financial Support to Third party within EARASHI open call.

If you are unsure, please contact our helpdesk at info@earashi.eu.

[1] Following the H2020 Work Programme 2016-2017, “Access to Risk Finance” definition, midcaps are companies with 250 to 3000 employees

No. To avoid conflicts of interest, applications will not be accepted from persons or organizations who are partners in the EARASHI consortium or who are formally linked to partners of the consortium.

• The project shall address EARASHI scope and respond to the challenges, as described in the open call page, https://earashi.eu/open-calls/, aiming to
  • Support the industry in the uptake of advanced digital eco-responsible technologies (in particular AI, Data and Robotics)
  • Support workers in their daily activities and improve their working conditions (safety, health and well-being) leading to a productivity increase
  • Adopt a worker-centric approach by considering worker well-being and health at work (e.g. MSD and stress), design thinking methodology of production machines, worker acceptance and Ethics
• The project must be built by selecting one challenge listed in the 6 challenges description document and the adequate building Block among EARASHI catalogue.
• Project must involve EU member states or HORIZON Europe associated start-ups or SMEs, cross-board collaboration is strongly encouraged, with for instance the Building Block provider.
• The expected duration of a project is expected to be 15 to 18 months. Regardless of it duration, the granted project will have to be completed by the end of EARASHI – 28.02.2026.

For more information, please consult the Guide for Applicants available on our Website, contact any EARASHI partner or contact our helpdesk.

Any project should address one of the challenges publicly announced and listed on EARASHI website: https://earashi.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/EARASHI_OC2_Challenges_v28092023.pdf

Those 6 challenges have been selected and assessed by EARASHI external advisory board involving pan-European industrials with different profile and various application domain markets. For each challenge, we provide: i)One use-case, ii) Associated challenges, iii) An example of solutions, iv) Proposal of available competencies within EARASHI consortium (building blocks and service).

Some of the challenges are “Sold out” following the open call 1 results (already addressed through the open call 1 selected applications).

For the 1^st open call, we received 46 fully finalized proposals and we selected 5 of them. And we cannot predict with confidence either the number of submitted proposals or their quality we will receive for the 2^nd open call.

Based on our experience in such open calls, our offer to guide and support any company to submission of a good quality proposal ensure the feasibility of your proposal, especially regarding the selected Building Block, make sure you pass the very first criteria of eligibility and increase significantly your chance of success.

For similar open calls under H2020 programme, 20-25% was observed as an average success rate, considering all the pre-discussed considerations.

The innovative company is strongly advised to contact the helpdesk or an EARASHI partner, as for instance a Building Block/technology provider (https://earashi.eu/building-blocks/). Information about the helpdesk (info@earashi.eu) and EARASHI partners are available on EARASHI website.

Yes. Please consider the checklist below as a helpful tool to maximize the chances of your proposal to be successful:

• Does your planned work fit with the call for proposals?

Check that your proposal does indeed address the overall scope and one of the 6 challenges defined for this call. Make sure that the selected building block and the proposal are well aligned with the targeted challenge.

• Have you contacted the helpdesk or one EARASHI Partner for support?

Experience indicates that proposals with engagement before submission are more likely to succeed. Each applicant should contact EARASHI as soon as possible for guidance, in particular regarding the selection of one technical Building Block and its adequacy.

• Do you plan to attend EARASHI proposed online webinars?

Diifferent webinars will proposed: 1) to propose a general overview of the project and discuss guidelines, 2) to provide guidance for the pitch video. The webinar programme will be soon available on our website, etc. We plan to record the webinars so that recorded versions will be available online afterwards. Nevertheless online webinars will offer the opportunity of a live Question/Answer session. Please Note that open call registered webinars are also available online at https://earashi.eu/our-events/.

• Does your proposal address the EARASHI scope & challenges, the technical Building Blocks, coaching Services offer, human centricity?

Check that your proposed work does indeed comply with the requirements on the usage of EARASHI offer.

• Is your proposal eligible?

The eligibility criteria are given in chapter 3 of the Guide for Applicants (“Rules and Conditions”). Make sure that you satisfy the formal participation requirements (eligible country, written in English, compliance of requested funding with national and EU regulations, no multiple funding possible, etc.).

• Readability

Check that your proposal printable and all information (especially in charts, figures etc.) is readable, check that the pitch video is not corrupted and is watchable (image and sound).

• Budgetary limits

Check that you comply with the budgetary limits (200 000 € per project / per company) and the funding ratio (100% for start-up and 70% for SME). More details in the Guide for Aplicants.

• Did you use the current template?

All proposals have to use the current proposal template available on the website.

• Is your proposal complete (three documents)? Have you completed all the mandatory questions for both the application form and the Eco-design questionnaire)? Have you respected the pitch video’s instructions?
• Does your proposal answer all the requests/comments?

Proposals should be precise, concise and should answer to requested questions. Omitting requested information will almost certainly lead to lower scores in the evaluation.

• Did you maximize your chances?

EARASHI partners can give valuable feedback during the creation of your proposal that can significantly increase the quality of a proposal.

• Have you submitted your proposal before the deadline (December 20^th, 5 PM CET time)?

It is strongly recommended not to wait until the last minute to submit the proposal.

Pitch video training: EARASHI will set-up a webinar where the guidelines for a business case and how to pitch are explained. The webinar will be recorded and made available on the website. Webinar programme will soon be available on EARASHI website.

Yes, the guidelines explained during the webinar will be made available as well. Please note the Open Call 1 Pict video webinar (recorded one) is available at https://earashi.eu/our-events/.

This will be discussed between the innovative company and the associated EARASHI partner. It should be reflected in the application form, in particular in the implementation chapter (non-exhaustive). Then it will be detailed in the annex of the AE standard contract that shall be signed for any granted project. The template is available on the registration page for information.

The definition of this collaboration is part of the submitted proposal. In order to define the most adequate solution for the proposal, the innovative company can rely on EARASHI partner for advice and help to build the proposal. Please contact EARASHI consortium through the helpdesk or the EARASHI partners.

An application can be the result of the collaboration between two companies The rules to follow to ensure eligibility are:

• The total Cascade funding for this AE will be limited to 200 000 € and it will be split between the 2 companies in coherence with the project implementation. Be aware the funding ratio depends on the company type (Start-Up or SME) as it is detailed in the Guide for Applicant.
• As cross-border is strongly encouraged (see open call description), it will be really valuable if either the 2 companies are cross-border or one of the company is cross-border with the EARASHI Building-Block provider.

As it is stated in the Guide for Applicants, it is highly recommended to integrate one single Building Block. Anyway, if a company foresees to select more than one building block (combination of BBs provided by either different EARASHI consortium members or one single EARASHI consortium member), it is pre-requisite to clarify the possibility with the partners before submission of a proposal, in order to check the feasibility both technically and budget-wise, as well as its pertinence. Please note that applications with more than 2 building blocks (3 and above) will be rejected.

For each proposed project, an innovative company can ask for funding with a maximum of 200 000 k€ as it is explained in the Guide for Applicants (§3.4). Beware that the funding ratio depends on the company status, 100% for a start-up and 70% for the SME (midcaps are not eligible for cascade funding within EARASHI).corresponding to 70% of the total budget. The maximum funding for one project is 200 000 €. The maximum funding for a company is 200 000 € independently of the number of EARASHI proposals she would be involved in.

The eligible costs are detailed in both the Application form and the Guide for Applicants, summarized hereafter:

• Direct personnel Costs.

Careful: The personnel costs are to be consumed by the workforce in the country where the Third Party that has been granted the fund is registered (a transfer of funds to affiliated or associated organizations is not allowed and would fall within the subcontracting rules).

• Other direct costs (for example materials, travel costs -technical meetings, dissemination activities etc. – but only inside Europe)
• Indirect costs – up to 25% of all direct costs
• Subcontracting – up to 15% of the proposed cascade funding

Please consider that all budgeted costs must comply with the applicable national law on taxes, labor and social security and must be in compliance with the rules and conditions laid out in Council and Parliament decisions relevant to the HORiZON EUROPE framework programme, in particular – but not exclusively – “Regulation (EU) 2021/695 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 April 2021″.

The financial support to Applicants covers the R&D work. This comes in addition to the collaboration, support and assistance provided by the EARASHI partners through the Building Block portfolio offer and the coaching service catalogue.

Cascade funding, Financial Support To Third party and FSTP (acronym for Financial Support to Third Party) all refer to European funding that will be distributed to companies through open calls setup by HORIZON Europe Project such as EARASHI.

EARASHI monitoring Partners will support and will serve as a “single” point of contact for the third parties during the execution of the selected Application Experiments. Commonly the monitoring partner will be the Building Block provider.

In most cases, the monitoring partner will be the cascade funding partner (otherwise it will be the CEA), thus in charge of transferring EARASHI the cascade funding budget, in agreement with the signed standard AE agreement.

An innovative company can submit as many projects as it wishes (no limitation in project number) as long as the restrictions on the requested budget are met: max of 200 000 € cascade funding per project and max of 200 000 € cascade funding per company if two or more projects are submitted.

When the standard agreement is signed and the project starts (kick-off meeting), the third party (i.e. open calls’ selected applicant) receives a prepayment of 25% of the cascade funding. Then the payment follows the payment schedule as described in the signed standard contract: 60% of intermediate payment based on identified deliverables and milestones, 15% after the final review of the project and associated deliverables are validated.

All partners involved in a funded and implemented Application Experiment will sign a Standard Agreement before the Application Experiment starts. All information of whatever nature and in whatever form or mode of communication, which is disclosed by a Party to any other during the implementation of the Application Experiment and which has been explicitly marked as “confidential” at the time of disclosure, or when disclosed orally, has been identified as confidential at the time of disclosure and has been confirmed and designated in writing within fifteen (15) calendar days from oral disclosure, is “Confidential Information” and shall not be disclosed to any other third party.

For more details, please refer to the standard agreement available on line, here.

Each partner of the standard agreement keeps its own IP; the EARASHI partner and the applicant company respectively.

In case there is a need of IP transfer after the project, a bilateral contract between the involved parties will be signed to define the exploitation rules after the application experiment.

For more details, please refer to the standard agreement available on line, here.

Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) are indicators of the maturity level of particular technologies. It provides a common understanding of technology status and addresses the entire innovation chain. There are 9 TRLs, TRL1 being the lowest and TRL9 the highest ones.

Yes, the third parties (i.e. open calls’ selected applicants) are expected to participate to EARASHI dissemination and thus will be invited to attend some of EARASHI events.

The expectations regarding the Third Party involvement in EARASHI dissemination and communication activities are listed in the Application form, Implementation chapter.

The companies are encouraged to include  a dissemination budget in their costs declaration for cascade funding. Otherwise such budget will need to be discussed project to project as (and when) the expenses have not always been included in the proposal budget once the project is selected.

The third-party (i.e. AE open calls’ selected applicants) pays for their own sub-contractor. Every sub-contract must already be included in the budget in the proposal, with their rationale. Sub-contracting is limited to up to 15% of the proposed cascade funding to be eligible. Please contact EARASHI help desk for further clarification.

No. The projects are accepted as they are described in the submitted proposal. There is no a posteriori negotiation.

No. The funding cannot be used for retroactive payments. It must correspond to work done during the timeline of the application experiment (as submitted).

The standard HORIZON Europe rules are applied (e.g. 25% for indirect costs).

The evaluation process is meant to last 7 weeks. Then the evaluation report is submitted to the EC for review of the selected projects by the European Commission for 1 week. Therefore EARASHI will communicate the result of each proposal back to the innovative company 8 weeks after the end of the call. For the open call 1, selection results will be available by end of July 2023. Notification date will be made public on EARASHI website.

All AE proposals submitted on time will be evaluated throughout an evaluation procedure described in the Guide for Applicants (external experts, business case evaluation and internal evaluation committee, here). It will result in the selection of the proposals that will be supported and therefore funded on the base of EARASHI cascade funding process.

Yes, if a project proposal is not accepted at open call 1, the innovative company can resubmit an improved version of the proposal at open call 2, providing the proposal addresses Open Call 2 scope and challenges. If Open call 2 will be the last of EARASHI open calls.

No, this is not mandatory but strongly recommended. . The information given during a webinar will then be available on the website through the open call-related documents (https://earashi.eu/open-calls/) and the recorded webinars available on line.

In any case, do not hesitate to contact EARASHI consortium through the helpdesk (info@earashi.eu), or direct contact with the partners.