SME-Instrument News

By Ingemar Pongratz

The results of the evaluation of the SME-Instrument proposal submitted to the European Commission is finalized and the information has been submitted to the project coordinators.

the SME-Instrument is part of the Leadership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies of the Horizon 2020 European funding scheme and is aimed to support European small and medium sized enterprises (SME) reach their full potential by providing funds to support innovation projects.

In the second cut off date the Commission received 2343 SME INSTRUMENT phase 1 proposals and 680 project SME-INSTRUMENT Phase 2 proposal. Out of these proposals 320 phase 1 proposal obtained above threshold marks form the evaluators and 259 proposal were selected for funding.

For the stage 2 SME Instrument proposal, out of the 680 submitted proposals 180 reached or surpassed the threshold and 71 proposal were selected for funding.

It will be interesting to follow these figures. At a glance it seems that the success rate in phase 1 and phase 2 are relatively similar, around 7% for stage 1 and around 10% for stage 2 proposals. If anything the statistics suggest that the success rate for stage 2 is somewhat higher

It will be interesting to monitor if the trend remain the same in the future. Clearly, the demands to enter into the SME-Instrument phase 2 i higher and the proposals need to demonstrate that they have reached at least prototype level if not above prototype level and thus be rather close to market.

Fenix Scientific AB helps clients to plan and administer project proposal for public funding schemes including Horizon 2020. If you wish to contact us, please use the online form or send an email to:

Ingemar.Pongratz(a)pongratzconsulting.com

Stockholm by Ingemar Pongratz