Joint Cluster Initiatives (EUROCLUSTERS) for Europe’s recovery: SMP-COSME-2024-CLUSTER-01

This action will incentivise the creation and development of Joint Cluster Initiatives (EUROCLUSTERS), one of the flagship measures mentioned in article 8 of the Single Market Programme (SMP). It builds on the successful and inspiring experience of the COSME and the Horizon 2020/INNOSUP-1 cluster projects, and on the Euroclusters call launched in 2021, which created 30 cross-sectorial, interdisciplinary and trans European Joint Cluster Initiatives to improve the resilience of the European industrial ecosystems, while boosting their green and digital transformation.The initiatives will help clusters organisations and their members to strengthen their interlinkages and collaborate to exploit new resilient business opportunities and anticipate and address challenges they face in terms of critical infrastructure, inputs, technologies, skills and value chains. The actions foreseen in this call for proposals will focus on the implementation of actions foreseen in the Green Deal industrial plan and REPowerEU plan, in order to improve SMEs’ social and economic resilience, while supporting their green and digital transition.

The resilience of value and supply chains will be a priority, for example, through the diversification of production inputs on different EU territories, pooling of supply or demand, joint investments in critical innovation and production facilities, development of alternative EU technologies and implementation of circularity measures.

In addition, clusters and their companies shall explore new ways of rebuilding and reconnecting global supply and value chains in a joint strategy, reshaping their global position to take account of the latest developments affecting their field of business, and taking rational positions on risk exposure.

The Joint Cluster Initiatives (EUROCLUSTERS) will build on the EU cluster capacity to bring together a critical mass of firms and societies in geographical and functional proximities, which are economically and socially interdependent. Euroclusters will contribute to the implementation of the European Commission’s New Industrial Strategy for Europe as well as to its updated Strategy that was published in May 202117 and the SME Strategy for a sustainable and digital Europe adopted in March 2020 by building resilience and accelerating the transition to a green and digital economy. Euroclusters will also support the implementation of the Green Deal Industrial Plan for the Net-Zero Age and its initiatives (Critical Raw Materials and Net-Zero Industry Acts), and the European Economic Security Strateg to ensure the security of the EU value chains.

The main objective of this call for proposals, for both strands, is to support innovation and adoption of new processes and advanced technologies for strategic autonomy, to build capacity in the most critical areas of the relevant ecosystem(s) and to reinforce transformation into a greener, more digital, and resilient economy.

This call is expected to contribute to the following other supporting objectives:

• to establish networks and strategic partnerships to improve the resilience of the EU industrial ecosystems by developing and strengthening value chains in the EU Single Market;
• to provide training to foster upskilling and reskilling of the workforce and attracting talents;
• to go international to boost access to global supply and value chains.

The objective of the Euroclusters will also be to prepare and help businesses to adopt advanced technologies, e.g., Internet of Things (IoT), photonics, nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence. Euroclusters should foster the establishment of strategic collaboration between tech-savvy companies and traditional businesses, with particular attention to SMEs, focusing on the benefits of adopting advanced technologies.

In particular, the Euroclusters should help build a portfolio of projects among traditional and tech-savvy companies to promote companies’ collaboration and technology adoption within and across specific industrial ecosystems. This objective is aiming to raise awareness on existing solutions and help accelerate their uptake.

In these areas, it will be essential that Euroclusters cooperate effectively with other support providers and networks and avoid unnecessary duplication.

In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:

• be legal entities (public or private bodies)
• be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
• EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
• non-EU countries:
  • listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Single Market Programme
• be or represent a cluster organisation (see definition below), a Single Market Programme (SMP) cluster network, or other types of organisations supporting green and digital transitions and building EU resilience.

Proposals must be submitted by a consortium of at least three applicants (beneficiaries; not affiliated entities), which complies with the following conditions:

• minimum three cluster organisations (as defined above) or cluster networks from at least three different EU Member States;
• at least half of the partners in each consortium (Eurocluster) must be cluster organisations or cluster networks registered or having submitted a registration on the ECCP by the submission deadline of this call for proposals; or
• the applicant consortium must include at least one partner established in a less advanced region of an EU Member State (as defined and applied in the Cohesion policy regulation 2021-202754: GDP per capita <75%). The name of the less advanced region needs to be indicated in Annex 5 to Part B – Eligibility checklist. The name of this region must be coherent with the region that appears in the legal address (as per provided PIC number) of this partner.

Expected Outcome

Qualitative and quantitative indicators:

• Number of partnerships;
• Take up of innovation solutions in SMEs;
• Number of businesses putting in place process innovations leading to improved sustainability;
• Number of businesses that enhanced their skills for sustainability / circularity;
• Quality of business support activities such as innovation uptake, re/upskilling and internationalisation and collecting impact data.