Latest news

The Commission is launching today the second call for large-scale projects under the Innovation Fund, one of the world's largest programmes for the demonstration of innovative low-carbon technologies, financed by revenues from the auction of emission allowances from the EU's Emissions Trading System. With a budget of €1.5 billion it will finance breakthrough technologies for renewable energy, energy-intensive industries, energy storage, and carbon capture, use and storage.

Clariant, a focused, sustainable and innovative specialty chemical company, today announced the official completion of its sunliquid® cellulosic ethanol plant in Podari, Romania. The completed construction is an important next step for the commercial deployment of sunliquid® technology and thus supports Clariant’s sunliquid® licensing business strategy. The facility will be operational in the fourth quarter, producing cellulosic ethanol from agricultural residues. BayFOR is a partner in the EU project LIGNOFLAG.

More women in science and research, fewer gender gaps in the labour market, more inclusion, a more balanced participation of women and men in different sectors of the economy and other gender equality initiatives – all of this is what the European Union wants to achieve, among other things through the introduction of a "Gender Equality Plan" (GEP) which will become mandatory in all Horizon Europe applications for calls with a deadline in 2022.

On Friday 8 October 2021, UAS4EUROPE, the leading network of European Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS), handed over its Action Plan for Innovation to EU Commissioner Mariya Gabriel. The Action Plan for Innovation contains twelve concrete recommendations from the field of applied research to realise the planned European Innovation Area (EIA).

The first "Cooperation Lounge" to intensify scientific cooperation between Bavaria and Tunisia, which took place from 4 to 6 October 2021, met with great interest. For three days, 140 stakeholders from Tunisia and Bavaria discussed potential paths and instruments for successful cooperation between the two regions for joint research projects in various fields of the humanities, economics, natural sciences and engineering.

The Commission launched today five new EU missions, a new and innovative way to work together and improve the lives of people in Europe and beyond. EU missions aim to tackle big challenges in health, climate and the environment, and to achieve ambitious and inspiring goals in these areas.
 

On 15 September 2021, the European Commission adopted a Communication presenting the concept of the New European Bauhaus (NEB). The initiative is an ecological, economic and cultural project with a view to realising the European "Green Deal". It aims to combine design, sustainability, accessibility, affordability and investment to make Europe climate neutral by 2050.

Freising, Germany – CIRCULAR FoodPack aims to facilitate the circular use of plastic packaging addressing the most sensitive product category: Food. The food packaging sector constitutes of 87%¹ of all European flexible plastic multilayer-composites. Such composites are used to fulfil the high requirements for food preservation and safety. Since such material combinations are inseparable, the multi-layer composites cannot be recycled into high-quality materials by state of the art recycling technologies, which counteracts the intentions of a circular use.

Mehr (PDF)

Switzerland can currently only participate as a non-associated third country in the first calls for proposals of the EU framework programme for research and innovation Horizon Europe. The European Commission has made this clear in the list of eligible countries published on the Funding & Tenders Portal.

The European Commission has published a Program Guide to Horizon Europe. In it, applicants will find background information on the structure of the framework program as well as the related policy priorities of the European Union, such as the European Partnerships, the missions, international cooperation, Open Science or digital key technologies.