The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership, co-funded by the European Union, has launched the first joint call for a thriving sustainable blue economy. The total estimated budget is about € 50 million.
With financial support from the European Commission, the first co-funded call of the Partnership pools national and regional financial resources through the participation of 36 research funding organisations from 23 countries (out of the 25 part of the network)responsible for funding research and innovation actions in the blue economy. This call is also contributing to the objectives of the Mission “Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030”.
The call aims to support transnational research and innovation projects addressing one of the five priority areas below:
- Planning and managing sea-uses at the regional level
- Development of offshore marine multi-use infrastructures to support the blue economy
- Climate-neutral, environmentally sustainable, and resource-efficient blue food and feed
- Green transition of Blue Food production
- Digital Twins of the Ocean test use cases at EU sea-basins and the Atlantic Ocean
Projects must be developed at a pan-European level and in the different European sea basins: the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean and establish close cross-sectorial cooperation in the science, innovation, and economic sectors. Projects are expected to consider several European sea basins or, at least, to consider the impact of the projects on several European sea basins.
A two-step process will apply to this call, with a mandatory submission of pre-proposals as first step (deadline: 14 April 2023 at 15:00 CET) and submission of full proposals as second step (13 September 2023 at 15:00 CET).
The complete announcement and call documents, including full eligibility and evaluation criteria, are available from the Partnership website. The Partnership will also organise a general information webinar for interested researchers on 2 March 2023.
Background
The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership is a EU Horizon Europe co-funded Partnership. The planned investments over 7 years are expected to reach € 450 Million. It constitutes a network of 60 Partner institutions from 25 countries and the European Commission that enables an unprecedented effort to pool research and innovation investments and align national programmes at pan-European scale, taking into consideration the sea-basin (Mediterranean, Black Sea, Baltic and North Sea) and Atlantic Ocean dimension.
The Partnership will contribute to the goals of the Mission Ocean and Waters, in particular by boosting the transformation towards a climate-neutral, sustainable, productive and competitive blue economy by 2030, while creating and supporting the conditions for a healthy ocean for the people by 2050.
Source: European Commission I Research Innovation (https://bit.ly/3IjZbOP)