General conditions

1. Admissibility conditions: described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes

Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System

2. Eligible countries: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.

3. Other eligibility conditions: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes

5. Evaluation and award:

• Award criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes

• Submission and evaluation processes are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual

The granting authority can fund a maximum of one project.

• Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes

6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes

Beneficiaries will be subject to the following additional access rights: Each beneficiary must grant royalty-free access to its results to the EOSC Association for monitoring and developing policies and strategies for the European Open Science Cloud. Each beneficiary must also provide directly to the EOSC Association the information the beneficiary deems necessary for monitoring and developing policies and strategies for the European Open Science Cloud.

Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum as defined in the Decision of 7 July 2021 authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025). [[ This decision is available on the Funding and Tenders Portal, in the reference documents section for Horizon Europe, under ‘Simplified costs decisions’ or through this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/ls-decision_he_en.pdf]].

Specific conditions

7. Specific conditions: described in the specific topic of the Work Programme

Documents

Call documents:

Standard application form — call-specific application form is available in the Submission System

Standard application form (HE CSA)

Standard evaluation form — will be used with the necessary adaptations

Standard evaluation form (HE CSA)

MGA

Lump Sum MGA v1.0

Call-specific instructions

Detailed budget table (HE LS)

Guidance: "Lump sums - what do I need to know?"

Additional documents:

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 3. Research Infrastructures

HE Programme Guide

EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement

Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement

The work of this CSA should build on the (federation) services offered by the European Commission’s EOSC Core Platform and provide feedback and input for the evolution of the EOSC Core Services and the EOSC Exchange to ensure a wider uptake. In this context, the CSA will also assist with the update and promotion of the EOSC Interoperability Framework and assist in the set-up a process for its updates.

• The CSA should execute at least two use cases to demonstrate and promote the use of the federation services provided by the EOSC Core Platform (EU Node) and document the experience and lessons learned. The use cases should be driven by real-life user needs and consider the long-term sustainability of such federations. The use cases should include Research Infrastructures able to federate within EOSC and users which gain novel capabilities for their research work.
• Through the outcomes of the use cases, the CSA should propose to the EC and current EOSC governance a set of operational Rules of Participation and common set of policies and minimum requirements to be applied consistently across the EOSC federation.
• This set of rules, policies and requirements should be detailed in such a way they can be introduced in the operation of ESFRI, ERICs and other international, national or institutional RIs at the subdomain, domain and interdisciplinary levels as concerns the EOSC federation.
• They should be developed, maintained, and updated in accordance with the progressive deployment of the EOSC Core, EOSC Exchange and EOSC sustainability models and be based on latest input by the Task Forces of the EOSC Association and any additional, relevant input by the research community.

Proposals are expected to cover the following activities:

The CSA should explore concrete use cases of federations of Research Infrastructures and data/service providers to the EOSC Core Platform (EU Node). The CSA should contribute to the further evolution of the Rules of Participation and Acceptable Use Policies based on the identification of specific commitments and needs of the different contributors of the EOSC federation, and contribute to the related development of guidelines and recommendations on various aspects (incl. interoperability framework), and with this further promote the EOSC Core Platform (EU Node). This work should be done in close collaboration with relevant stakeholders, such as the contractors providing the Managed Services for the European Open Science Platform (EU Node)[1] , Research Infrastructures, thematic EOSC communities and EOSC national nodes.

To this end, the CSA should engage with and further build the EOSC federation community, and assist in the development of a common framework on the various aspects of the federation, including the following dimensions:

• Legal
• Business model and incentive structure
• Interoperability framework, including the support for FAIR principle and handling of PIDs across EOSC federation
• EOSC Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure
• EOSC Security Coordination
• EOSC Rules of Participation.

Coordination and collaboration with the Data Spaces Support Centre (DSSC) is required in order to take stock of identified common data infrastructure requirements, including technologies, processes, standards, and tools that will allow reuse of data across the various data spaces

Also, synergies should be established with the contractors of SIMPL[2] as foreseen in the latter’s procurement technical specifications, to avoid duplicating efforts and funding among major Union initiatives. The CSA should further provide an analysis of the status quo including the identification of gaps, on the basis of which an actionable roadmap shall be established with actions differentiated by main actors and levels (EU or national, topical or cross-cutting).

The proposed work should incorporate the necessary coordination efforts and resources with other relevant projects and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) governance structure in the context of the EOSC partnership.

[1]Managed Services for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Platform

[2]Smart middleware that will enable cloud-to-edge federations and support all major data initiatives funded by the European Commission