The aim of the project is to organize a conference "Manufuture 2019 - Sustainable Smart Manufacturing, MF2019" in cooperation with the Finnish government. The MF2019 conference will be part of European Days for Sustainable Circular Economy 30.9.-1.10.2019 and will be organized at the same time with The sustainable transition to a low carbon, climate-resilient circular economy: Creating the knowledge base, CE2019 and Sustainable innovation (SI). The Manufuture 2019 conference on 30 September to 1 October 2019 has been planned as a flagship event during the Presidency of the Finland of the Council of the European Union. The opening sessions on the first day of the two-day European Days for Sustainable Circular Economy will be organised parallel by the three separate conferences, while the second day programs are conference-specific, taking place at the same time and in the same venue. The second day will end to a joint adjourn, that will summarise and conclude the main findings and messages of the opening session and the three conferences, as well as draft key messages and recommendations for future actions on sustainable transitioning towards low carbon, climate-resilient circular economy in the European Union. Organising the three conferences at the same time with separate costs and is expected to bring several benefits, in particular as regards the visibility, spreading the information and invitations, management of the events, as well as the impact, networking, and sharing and dissemination of knowledge and resulting in common learning. Altogether 650 attendees are expected to the European Days for Sustainable Circular Economy as a whole and around 250 participants will be expected to attend the MF2019 conference.

The Seal of Excellence (SoE) is a new initiative launched at European level in October 2015 that aims to foster synergies between H2020 and other funding resources, mainly at regional and national level. The idea behind this SoE is to offer a gateway to companies and organizations across Europe that apply to the Horizon 2020 Programme and despite of meeting all the stringent thresholds of the calls, they can not be funded due to the lack of available budget. The first instrument where the Seal of Excellence has been implanted is the H2020 SME instrument. In that context, this Seal of Excellence linked to the SME instrument proposers offers a clear added value to national and regional authorities as a reliable filter of promising companies with international ambition, meriting an European funding but unable to achieve it, but still worth to be supported. For the phase 1, during 2015, a number of countries and regions have already been able to launch at national or regional level support mechanism for the Seal of Excellence phase 1 holders, mainly channelled through the “de minimis” regime. For the phase 2, the paths are not so direct considering Technology Readiness Level of 6 as starting point. This is the rationale of this proposal: to use the peer learning advanced methodology, proposed by the topic, together with the current tools from the lean start-up methodologies to develop and test different approaches to the valorisation of the Seal of Excellence for the SME instrument phase 2 within a small consortium of national innovation agencies (CDTI (ES), Enterprise Ireland (IE) and TEKES (FI) with a long tradition of collaboration among them, a strong know-how on the SME instrument and in charge of national programmes in support of SMEs through grants, loans and/or equity.

INNOWWIDE aims to bring European highly innovative SMEs to the forefront of international markets by prototyping and shaping a new and unique financial scheme (the “INNOWWIDE Call for proposals”) that will allow them to conduct Viability Assessment Projects (VAPs) in cooperation with local stakeholders, creating the conditions to increase the uptake of European innovative solutions in markets outside Europe. Two calls will be implemented with a total budget of 7,2M€, allowing to fund 120 VAPs (60k€/VAP), and targeting markets of developing countries, large emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico) and developed countries with the same allocation for each of these three country categories. The strength of this initiative lies in: (1) the experience of project partners concerning calls for proposals design and management, having 8 European funding agencies among them; (2) a SME-centric approach, to be implemented thanks to the extensive access and links to the European SMEs that project partners have; and (3) an ambitious stakeholder mobilisation plan with a strong focus on third country players thanks to partners international network of delegations (130 offices abroad in 45 countries). Project impact will be evaluated following a holistic, multilevel assessment approach covering European and international dimensions, done at VAP and at call level, and providing information from qualitative and quantitative points of view. This valuable information will be used to draw R&I policy conclusions, that will be shared with relevant policy bodies through the creation and operation of the “INNOWWIDE Policy Working Group”.

This ERA-NET Co-fund will bring together a number of national and transnational organisations with an interest in promoting the greater use of bioenergy. It follows on from two previous BESTF ERA-NET Plus initiatives launched in 2013 and, like its predecessors, aims to kick-start large scale investment in close-to-market implementation of bioenergy, thereby helping to achieve the key objectives of the European Industrial Bioenergy Initiative (EIBI) Implementation Plan and the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan. The EIBI aims to boost the contribution of sustainable bioenergy to the 2020 climate and energy objectives. This proposal addresses the need for integrated action across Europe to promote the development of bioenergy demonstrators across a number of technologies by coordinating research and development projects and providing a financial mechanism to support projects that are close to commercialisation. The overall aim for this third BESTF ERA-NET is to implement a joint programme for bioenergy demonstration projects to demonstrate enhanced bioenergy technologies that will help Europe progress towards achieving its 2016 and 2020 targets. It will leverage public-private partnerships to manage the risks and share the financing of close to market bioenergy projects. The key objectives of BESTF3 are: 1.To implement a single collaborative funding call that will support projects focused on the generation of bioenergy. 2.To maintain and enhance coherence and networking between national bioenergy programmes across the EU. 3.To further the demonstration of enhanced bioenergy technologies in order to help develop robust project plans for a range of demonstrator and flagship plants, that will help Europe to make progress towards achieving its 2016 and 2020 energy targets. 4.To disseminate knowledge gained from the programme and individual projects across the EU.

National Contact Points (NCPs) will play a key role in Horizon 2020 as providers of information and assistance to potential applicants and project beneficiaries. They constitute the main interface to the European R&D community for Member States and Associated Countries and the European Commission. While their activities are underpinned by the European Commission’s “Guiding principles for setting up systems of national contact points”, NCPs are appointed and financed at national level so that existing NCP systems show a wide variety of architectures and ways of working. This project aims to create and implement a new and integrated training of Horizon 2020 advisors – the NCP Academy. It brings together NCP Coordinators and NCPs for Legal and Financial aspects of Horizon 2020 to develop the NCP Academy concept and to develop and implement training courses on cross-cutting issues. It addresses quality standards and good practice as well as routes to feedback and communication for this community. In doing so it aims to significantly enhance the performance of NCPs and does so by harnessing the knowledge base already existing within this community. It will be responsive, addressing new issues that emerge during implementation of the Horizon 2020 programme and it will be all-inclusive, providing training to all NCPs, and especially targeting new and/or less experienced NCPs. The consortium will work closely with existing thematic NCP Networks, carefully serving their needs for cross-cutting aspects of Horizon 2020. Expected impacts include achievement of an improved and professionalised NCP service across Europe, thereby helping simplify access to Horizon 2020 calls.