Dear reader,

Summer holidays for us are usually interlinked with either August-September proposal deadlines or anticipating results for proposals submitted in spring. At the same, we have recently mobilized our efforts in screening through upcoming calls for 2020.

As you may know, the Commission announced the budget plan for 2020 covering the topics on climate change, clean energy, plastics, cybersecurity and digital economy. The final calls are also bringing with Horizon Europe Programme for 2021-2027. We recommend conducting another search on the Funding and Tenders Portal, as many new calls were published in the last weeks.

We will also hold many autumn training courses to help you better prepare for 2020 and beyond. Among others:

• The European Funding Academy encompassing theoretical and practical sessions on proposal writing, project management and final reporting;
• 2-day preparatory course on Horizon Europe giving insights on anticipated changes and lessons learned from H2020.

Enjoy your summer and see you in autumn!

The European Commission today announced how it will spend the last and biggest annual tranche - €11 billion - of the EU research and innovation funding programme Horizon 2020 in the final year of the programme.

The European Commission released the results of the 2019 Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), which monitors Europe's overall digital performance and tracks the progress of EU countries with respect to their digital competitiveness.

The initiative, launched at the Digital Assembly in Bucharest, is setting up the first regional investment facility that specifically targets digital innovations and the scale-up of digital startups in the CESEE region