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

If projects use satellite-based earth observation, positioning, navigation and/or related timing data and services, beneficiaries must make use of Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS (other data and services may additionally be used).

The conditions are described in General Annex B. The following exceptions apply:

In order to achieve the expected outcomes, and safeguard the Union’s strategic assets, interests, autonomy, and security, it is important to avoid a situation of technological dependency on a non-EU source, in a global context that requires the EU to take action to build on its strengths, and to carefully assess and address any strategic weaknesses, vulnerabilities and high-risk dependencies which put at risk the attainment of its ambitions. For this reason, participation is limited to legal entities established in Member States, Iceland and Norway and the following additional associated country: Israel.[[Legal entities established in Israel are eligible to participate in this action on the basis that (i) Israel is an associated country (and continues to be on the date of the opening of this topic for submission); and (ii) Israel meets specific conditions. Prior to the adoption of this Work Programme, questionnaires were sent to non-EEA associated countries and countries in the process of association in order to assess their eligibility to participate.]]

For the duly justified and exceptional reasons listed in the paragraph above, in order to guarantee the protection of the strategic interests of the Union and its Member States, entities established in an eligible country listed above, but which are directly or indirectly controlled by a non-eligible country or by a non-eligible country entity, may not participate in the action unless it can be demonstrated, by means of guarantees provided by their eligible country of establishment, that their participation to the action would not negatively impact the Union’s strategic, assets, interests, autonomy, or security.[[The guarantees shall in particular substantiate that, for the purpose of the action, measures are in place to ensure that:

a) control over the applicant legal entity is not exercised in a manner that retrains or restricts its ability to carry out the action and to deliver results, that imposes restrictions concerning its infrastructure, facilities, assets, resources, intellectual property or know-how needed for the purpose of the action, or that undermines its capabilities and standards necessary to carry out the action;

b) access by a non-eligible country or by a non-eligible country entity to sensitive information relating to the action is prevented; and the employees or other persons involved in the action have a national security clearance issued by an eligible country, where appropriate;

c) ownership of the intellectual property arising from, and the results of, the action remain within the recipient during and after completion of the action, are not subject to control or restrictions by non-eligible countries or non-eligible country entity, and are not exported outside the eligible countries, nor is access to them from outside the eligible countries granted, without the approval of the eligible country in which the legal entity is established.]]

The participants directly subject to this eligibility condition are not only beneficiaries, affiliated entities and associated partners but also subcontractors. Their participation is therefore subject to an ex-ante ownership control assessment by the EC and, if relevant, the EC acceptance of a guarantee approved by an eligible country[[Notwithstanding that this eligibility condition specifically applies to beneficiaries, affiliated entities, associated partners and subcontractors, applicants are reminded that the restrictions on place of establishment and control extend to all participants under the grant agreement. See MGA, Annex 5, SPECIFIC RULES FOR CARRYING OUT THE ACTION (— ARTICLE 18) Implementation in case of restrictions due to strategic assets, interests, autonomy or security of the EU and its Member States.]].

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

• 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

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 RIA, IA)

Standard evaluation form — will be used with the necessary adaptations

Standard evaluation form (HE RIA, IA)

MGA

HE General MGA v1.0

Call-specific instructions

Ownership control declaration

Additional documents:

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 1. General Introduction

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 7. Digital, Industry and Space

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 13. General Annexes

HE Programme Guide

HE Framework Programme and Rules for Participation Regulation 2021/695

HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764

EU Financial Regulation

Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment

EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement

Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual

Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions

Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement

Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• Demonstration of the advantage of quantum gravimeters in innovative operational settings, delivering results beyond the state-of-the-art for real-world use cases. These operational settings should include a) an onboard gravimeter and b) terrestrial networks of gravimeters, consisting of at least eight gravimeters in total.
• Identification of new use cases and provision of innovative quantum gravimeter services for these use cases.
• The network of quantum gravimeters developed and optimised as part of the project should be ready for integration into a multi-country initiative such as a European Digital Infrastructure Consortium.

Quantum gravimeters (gravity sensors) can deliver high-sensitivity, real-time, non-invasive gravity measurements, with much greater precision than classical gravimeters. They have started to demonstrate their disruptive potential in many application sectors, including Earth observation and civil engineering. The unmatched precision offered by quantum gravimeters will only become more important in a world where extreme weather events are becoming more and more common, and where there is an even greater need to observe and track resources that are located up to several kilometres under the ground, such as water basins, gas deposits or magma concentrations.

Under this action, a consortium of public laboratories, metrology institutes, scientific institutes and/or other relevant partners is expected to carry out innovation activities to develop and demonstrate the practical viability and usefulness of a network of quantum gravimeters in specific operational settings, both in the form of a terrestrial network and also mounted on flying carriers (these could include innovative carriers such as drones, balloons or other flying carriers) and/or on ships or other seaborne carriers. Mounted gravimeters are to be deployed flexibly in different locations as needed, in order to provide gravity maps of potential areas of interest and confirm where more detailed exploration is worth pursuing. Terrestrial networks are then to be deployed at those specific sites to enable high-resolution, reproductible measurements to be performed over time to monitor and investigate areas of interest (such as volcanoes or zones with underground reservoirs). In all cases, gravimeters should be operated in order to deliver results for innovative use cases in areas including, but not limited to, Earth observation, geodesy, oceanography, hydrology, volcano monitoring and civil engineering.

Proposals should seek to:

• Deliver an extended proof-of-concept for deploying quantum gravimeters in innovative operational settings, including a) as terrestrial networks of several (8 to 10 in total) quantum gravimeters (possibly in hybrid mode with classical gravimeters and/or other types of quantum sensors such as magnetometers) and b) as individual quantum gravimeters mounted on flying carriers (which could include innovative carriers such as drones, balloons or other flying carriers) and/or on ships or other seaborne carriers. The proposal should detail the actions planned to procure gravimeters capable of carrying out the tasks needed to achieve the project’s deliverables, including the adaptation of these gravimeters for use on mounted carriers.
• Develop the components, tools, techniques and processes for optimising and industrializing quantum gravimeters for these innovative configurations, by enhancing their performance according to parameters such as resolution, sensitivity, precision, reproducibility, integration time, autonomy, footprint, robustness, compactness, and real-time data processing. They should seek to optimise the network configuration and carriers for operating quantum gravimeters and assess exhaustively and reproducibly the performances of the systems that are designed.
• Operate the optimised quantum gravimeters and their network infrastructure and carriers to deliver scientific results beyond the state-of-the-art (including in terms of precision) for use cases in areas including, but not limited to, Earth observation, geodesy, oceanography, hydrology, volcano monitoring and civil engineering. They should demonstrate the added value of operating mounted gravimeters and terrestrial networks of gravimeters, if possible in combination (e.g. by analysing areas of interest sequentially).
• Provide a plan for the long-term operation of the infrastructure beyond the life of the project, involving other EU actors working in relevant areas, so that it is ready for integration into a multi-country initiative such as a European Digital Infrastructure Consortium. They should also provide an extensive review of use cases that can be addressed by quantum gravimeters for various configurations. Interoperability of the data for potential further reuse with European data ecosystem initiatives including, but not limited, to the Data Spaces (funded under the Digital Europe Programme), the European Open Science Cloud, and Destination Earth, should be duly taken into account, while respecting all applicable legislation and access and using rights distinguished between different user groups (government, cooperations, research institutes etc.) for the data generated. They should also demonstrate how other types of quantum sensors could be integrated into the infrastructure.

The Commission considers that proposals with an overall duration of 36-48 months would allow these outcomes to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude the submission and selection of proposals requesting other durations.

Proposals should also cover synergies with other relevant European initiatives and programmes, including the Quantum Technologies Flagship and the planned development and deployment of a European space gravimetry infrastructure under Horizon Europe Cluster 4 Destination 5 (Open strategic autonomy in developing, deploying and using global space-based infrastructures, services, applications and data). In addition, they should contribute to spreading excellence across Europe; for example, through the involvement of Widening Countries.

The intended users of the infrastructure built by the project and the services it offers are entities established in the eligible countries.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

Activities are expected to start at TRL 6 and achieve TRL 8 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.