Last Wednesday, the European Commission launched the first calls for projects under Horizon 2020. Horizon 2020 will be the largest European Union Research and Innovation programme so far with a budget of almost €80 billion for the period 2014–2020. The Work Programme for 2104-2015 is worth more than €15 billion. The funding is intended to help boost Europe’s knowledge-driven economy, and tackle issues that will make a difference in people’s lives. This includes 12 areas that will be a focus for action in 2014/2015, including Water!
WssTP has worked hard over the last year in coordination with the EIP Water and our partners to promote the opportunities for water research and innovation activities in Horizon2020 in general, and the 2014-2015 Work Programme in particular. WssTP is very pleased to see that ‘Water Innovation: Boosting its value for Europe’ is amongst the 12 areas that have been identified for special focus in the Horizon 2020 Work Programme. The budget for these water-dedicated calls is €67 million for 2014 and estimate to €96 million for 2015. In addition, many opportunities exist for water-related research and innovation activities in other parts of the calls.
On 22nd of November 2013, WssTP and Errin jointly organised a Brokerage event dedicated to the water-related calls in the 2014-2015 work programme for H2020. The purpose of our event was to gear our members up to repeat the great success they achieved within the last FP7-2013 Water Inno-Demo Call. All the attendees were also provided by WssTP with an analysis of all the relevant water calls for the water sector.
With only a 4% participation, WssTP members are present in 91% of the winning consortia of this year’s FP7-2013 Water Inno-Demo Call,. Even more important, WssTP members had a success rate of 54% compared to an average success rate of only 13%!
