The Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) is a new EU funding programme focused on bringing digital technology to businesses, citizens and public administrations.
With a planned overall budget of €7.5 billion, it aims to accelerate the economic recovery and shape the digital transformation of Europe’s society and economy, bringing benefits to everyone, but in particular to SMEs.
DIGITAL will support projects in five key capacity areas: supercomputing, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, advanced digital skills, ensuring a wide use of digital technologies across the economy and society, including through Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs).
In November 2021, the European Commission has adopted 3 Work Programmes for the Digital Europe Programme, outlining the objectives and specific topic areas that will receive a total of €1.98 billion in funding
In February 2022 first proposals to fund AI Testing and Experimentation Facilities (TEFs) will be in the sectors of agri-food (€30 million), healthcare (€30 million), manufacturing (€30 million) as well as smart cities and communities (€20), aiming at one large-scale project per each sector.
Fist calls of proposals are expected at the beginning of year, stay tune!
Moreover, an Investment Platform for Strategic Digital Technologies will be developed under the InvestEU program based on the experience of the existing EU-AI/blockchain investment pilot. With a budget of 35.12 million euro, it will provide improved dedicated financial support to innovative digital start-ups and SMEs at all stages of their development (from early stage to scale-up phases) through equity and quasi-equity by combining funding from Digital Europe Programme with InvestEU guarantee. The Platform will focus on providing improved financing to strategic digital technologies, including AI, blockchain, 5G/edge computing, microelectronics, quantum technologies, high performance computing, cybersecurity and IoT in line with the EU digital strategy. The use of these strategic digital technologies is expected to also be contributing to sustainability and the greening of the ICT sector.
M4M has identified the open calls for the first 4 months of 2022, download the document here…