Apply for EU funding and manage your project.
To get funding for a project, you need to identify a relevant call for proposals under one of the programmes and carefully follow the specific guidelines on how to apply – each call is unique and subject to a dedicated selection process. Your project will compete for funding with those submitted by other applicants for that call.
STEP does not create new eligibility rules. To be funded under a given STEP call, projects would need to meet the relevant eligibility conditions, as well as comply with the specific rules of the relevant funding programme (i.e. defined in the work programmes and calls for proposals’ eligibility, selection, and award criteria).
Find out about what you need to know before you apply, the eligibility check, the application process, the award procedure, and contract signature.
Find out what to expect once you are awarded a contract: reporting, deliverables, audits, and communication.
Forthcoming calls for proposals
| 2024 | 2025 (indicative) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
Financial decision/ | Calls | Financial decision/ | Calls | |
European Defence Fund | June ‘24 (opening soon) | End March ‘25 | April ‘25 | |
Digital Europe Programme | Feb ‘24 (open) July ‘24 (planned) | Dec ‘24 | | |
Innovation Fund | Nov ‘23 (closed) | Nov ’24 | Nov ’24 | |
Horizon Europe (EIC) | NA | Q3 ’24 | Q3 ‘24 | |
EU4Health | June ’24 (planned) | TBC | TBC | |
Support at the different stages of technology development
EU funding under STEP provides support to strategic technologies at all stages of development, from technologies that are at still at development, demonstration, or prototype stage, to technologies that are already commercially available and for which markets already exist:
- Support to the upstream development of critical technologies: this includes all development stages from research and innovation up to the prototype demonstration in an operational environment.
- Support to the development of critical manufacturing capacities for large scale production: this covers measures supporting the establishment of manufacturing capacities at industrial scale (including first-of-a-kind ones) for critical technologies’ products and relevant components and sub-components, including the machinery specifically used to produce these.