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.

This Call for Proposals, Regional Innovation Scheme Urban Mobility Specialists (RISUMS), aims to select the strongest proposals that will deliver activities to support the RIS strategy in the selected regions and countries in all fields of activity, such as enlarging the network, scouting and supporting new talents or products, and deploying new solutions.

The total maximum EIT funding allocated to this call for 2025 is approximately €1.500.000 all countries combined. A similar amount is estimated for 2026, 2027 and 2028.

Projects selected in this Call for Proposals must have a duration of 48 months, from 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2028. Therefore, each Work Package will have a duration of 48 months and their corresponding KPI, PFT, milestones, outputs and deliverables established and accomplished every year.

Informative yearly estimation of budget clusters:

• Micro regions/countries (Malta): funding available between €50.000 and €70.000
• Small regions/countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Bulgaria): funding available between €70.000 and €100.000.
• Medium-sized regions/countries (Croatia + Slovenia + Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece + Cyprus, Hungary, Portugal, Serbia + Montenegro + North Macedonia): funding available between €90.000 and €120.000.
• Large regions/countries (Romania, Poland, Türkiye): funding available between €140.000 and €180.000.

It is important to highlight that the above budget clusters are merely informative estimations of the expected project size and should only be used as a rule. Since the budget is closely connected to the expected offered outcomes of the yearly work plans and not strictly to the size of the region/country, the final budget distribution will be based on the value-for-money principle. Higher realistically offered outcomes might justify a higher budget proposal.

• New Entrepreneurship
• Research, Technological Development and Innovation

• Large Enterprises
• Legal Entities
• Other Beneficiaries
• Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions
• Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

This Call for Proposals is strategically focused on RIS countries and is therefore open to all legal entities (for example SMEs, start-up accelerators, research & technology organisations, or large businesses) established in the following EU Member States and Third countries associated to Horizon Europe: Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Türkiye.

It is also open to the following regions, covering several EU Member States and Third countries associated to Horizon Europe:

• Croatia and Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina,
• Greece and Cyprus,
• Serbia and Montenegro and North Macedonia.

This Call for Proposals is intended to select only one proposal per country and per region. In other words, each proposal must cover only one country or region.

It is open to multi-participant proposals (a consortium of several entities) and mono-participant proposals (one single entity). In the case of a consortium, the proposals must fulfil the following eligibility criteria:

• The proposal must be composed of a maximum of 3 independent entities from the eligible countries mentioned above.
• Each entity must be identified as a specialist in at least one area covered by the proposal: start-up acceleration, education and training, and business development.
• Accordingly, each consortium partner should lead at least one of the four work packages (WPs) (i.e. one partner can cover more than one area of expertise).

If qualified, one key expert may cover several areas. In such cases, please nominate the expert for each position separately. If an area is not covered in the proposal, the corresponding key expert does not need to be provided; however, the connected scoring of the expert/area will be lost. The Lead Applicant of each proposal is requested to submit a signed self-declaration of competencies (on behalf of the consortium, if any) when submitting the proposal, to declare that the entity/entities involved in the proposal fulfil this requirement. A self-declaration template is available on the Call webpage.

For further information and the list of affected entities, please refer to Annex I of the Eligibility of Expenditure document published on the webpage of the call for proposals.

Participating in one of EIT Urban Mobility projects means being part of the EIT Urban Mobility community. All entities of selected proposals are asked to be part of the community and to choose one of the following membership categories when initiating their projects:

• Gold members: they pay an annual fee of €30.000 and have full access to all benefit packages offered by EIT Urban Mobility.
• Silver members: they pay an annual fee of €10.000 and have limited access to all benefit packages offered by EIT Urban Mobility. In the case of Small Enterprises and NGOs, a reduced annual fee of €5.000 will be applied.
• Leading cities: with an annual fee of €10.000 they have full access to the gold membership package and the additional city-pecific services. In the case of cities with a population of below 300,000 inhabitants, a reduced annual fee of €5.000 will be applied.

Research and Innovation Foundation
Address: 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/

Contact Persons:

George Christou
Scientific Officer
Email: gchristou@research.org.cy

Nedi Kaffa
Scientific Officer
Email: nkaffa@research.org.cy

All applicants may contact the RIS Team at EIT Urban Mobility at ris@eiturbanmobility.eu to resolve any concerns or doubts about the call content and the call process.

• Funding&Tenders
• EIT Urban Mobility Strategic Agenda 2021-2027
• Call document