ENI CBC IN MOTION: February 2018
Funding opportunities: calls are calling
January has been a successful month for those who are seeking ENI CBC funding opportunities. 2 new calls of proposals have been launched and 4 are still running! Let’s have a closer look at some of them.
Lithuania-Russia has launched its first call for proposals on 10 January 2018 (deadline 10 April). The budget of 10 million euros is available for joint initiatives in the field of culture, social inclusion, good governance, border management and border security. A number of information events for potential applicants and partners will take place in Lithuania and Russia during the first week of February.
€800 000 are foreseen for cross-border activities in the specific area of `Fostering shared actions in risk management and a readiness to cope with environmental disasters` covered by the second call for proposals of Estonia-Russia which was likewise open on 10 January 2018 (deadline 7 March). Also in this case, consultations on the preparation of project applications will be held in Russia and in Estonia from 9 till 13 February.
A few weeks are left before the closure of the second call for proposals of Latvia-Lithuania-Belarus (deadline 22 February). Meanwhile, in parallel to the regional consultation seminars, the programme has prepared video instructions on filling in the grant application form, which are available on its website.
The third call for proposals of South-East Finland-Russia, with the available budget of 6,5 million euros, is still running (deadline 28 March). The fourth call is scheduled to be closed on 15 June 2018, allocating the indicative financing envelope of 8,5 million euros to all four priorities. More details concerning the fourth call shall be made available during the spring 2018.
Good participation trends continue!
As presented in our January bulletin, Hungary-Slovakia-Romania-Ukraine has set a good participation trend, and now the Mediterranean Sea Basin has joined it! The programme closed its first call for standard projects on 24 January, with 419 proposals submitted by 2,959 organisations from the 13 participating countries. The requested financing amounts to nearly 1 billion euros which is 11 times higher than the available budget of the call. The first results show an almost equal participation (49% vs. 51%) of organizations from Mediterranean Partner Countries and EU Mediterranean Countries. Italy continues to be the most active country, with 579 organizations involved, Tunisia is second, with 430 actors followed by Greece, Spain and Jordan. The most popular priority of the call are sustainable tourism, the support to Euro-Mediterranean economic clusters and social inclusion.
A balanced participation was also reached in the case of Italy-Tunisia: out of more than 150 proposals submitted by the deadline of the first call for standard projects (15 January 2018), 57% were presented by Italian lead applicants while the remaining 43% was submitted by Tunisian ones. The EU contribution available for this call amounts to 16 million euros and covers all programme objectives: business and SME development, support to education, research, technological development and innovation, environmental protection and climate change mitigation.
The first phase of the evaluation processes, which includes the administrative check and the assessment of the relevance and quality of design of proposals, will start soon. We wish good luck to all the applicants for the evaluation!
Projects in focus
Talking about applicants, some of them have been particularly successful! 23 projects have been recently selected for funding by the Joint Monitoring Committee of the Black Sea Basin Programme. 18,6 million euros have been allocated to promote business and entrepreneurship, as well as coordination of environmental protection and joint reduction of marine litter. The projects involve 114 organisations, half of which come from EU Member States. The share of lead applicants from ENI CBC Partner Countries amounts to 22%. Major participants are NGOs (42%), followed by bodies governed by public law (31%) and local and regional authorities (27%).
Not all projects, however, get selected through calls for proposals. Most ENI CBC programmes decided also to co-finance Large Infrastructure Projects (LIPs), which are in most cases selected by means of a direct award. A total of 57 LIPs have been submitted by 10 ENI CBC programmes before the end of 2017 to the EC for the further approval. They are currently being reviewed by DG NEAR and other Commission services.
Preparing a quality project proposal is not an easy process. Neither is the project implementation. That is why ENI CBC programmes commit themselves to support applicants and project partners by developing various support tools. South-East Finland-Russia, Karelia and Poland-Belarus-Ukraine have developed new manuals for project lead beneficiaries and beneficiaries and Lithuania-Russia has prepared joint documents for both applicants and beneficiaries. These tools, which include detailed information on project application, implementation, communication and visibility, are already available on the programmes’ websites.
The ENI CBC community never stops and proceeds at an ever-faster pace, involving more and more new actors. We will continue to highlight the ENI CBC achievements coming back with more news in our next bulletin. Meanwhile, stay updated through our Facebook page, Twitter and website. See you in March!