Interregional Innovation Investments (I3) Instrument – Financial and advisory support for investments in interregional innovation projects in shared or complementary smart specialisation areas (Strand 1) – 2024

Objectives

• To increase the competitiveness and the resilience of EU value chains on the basis of interregional cooperation and shared smart specialisation areas
• To support interregional innovation investments by offering consortia of innovation actors from the quadruple helix ecosystems the necessary financial and advisory support to bring their innovations to a mature level, ready for commercialisation and scale-up, while bridging and reducing the innovation divide in Europe with a strong cohesion policy focus of integrating all regions and in particular the less developed regions into European value chains

Priorities

• Priority 1: Digital Transition
  • Sub-priority 1: Digital economy innovation : deployment of innovative solutions for businesses digitalisation and digital services, demonstration of innovative digital technologies in view of the commercialisation of research results, user dirven innovation and valorisation of traceability and big data, “digital base” open innovation
  • Sub-priority 2:  Digital transformation of public administration and public services : new or significantly upgraded services for e-government, investments in innovative solutions helping administrations to make services user-friendly, accessible and more interoperable
• Priority 2: Green transition : to support innovative value chain investments, to boost the economy through green technology and to create sustainable industry/transport
• Priority 3: Smart manufacturing : to support interregional innovation investments for the uptake of new or improved manufacturing solutions, as well as for supporting industry to face the challenge of digitalisation and to promote the shift towards a more environmentally sustainable production

Among financed activities

• Financial support for producing plans and arrangements or designs for new, altered or improved products, processes or services
• Adaptation of existing prototypes (i.e., by combining two or more key enabling technologies)
• Development of portfolios of projects for close-to-market investments that deploy new or improved technologies or processes
• Innovation services for the development of the business investment interconnecting value chains
• Test beds and complementary activities needed to improve regulations, standards and/or to remove barriers and bottlenecks to innovation

Eligibility

• Be a legal person
• Be a public or private entity
• Be established in one of the eligible countries:
  • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories)
• A consortium composed of at least 5 entities, established in at least 5 different regions from 3 different EU Member States must be constituted
• The consortium coordinator must be a public body or an entity entrusted by national or regional governments to develop or implement innovation and investment actions for SMEs

Additional information

• Initial duration of the action: between 18 and 36 months
• Contact: EISMEA-I3-INSTRUMENT-CALLS@ec.europa.eu

Useful

• Guidelines: Click here
• Other call documents: Click here
• Executive Agency website: Click here
• More information: Click here

• Total budget of the call: 31 million euro
• Amount of the grant: between 2 and 10 million euro
• Funding rate: up to 70% of the total eligible costs (100% for the cost of providing financial support to third parties (FSTP))