Insights
9 January 2026
GIA Institute has achieved a successful outcome in the most recent CSA call in which we participated. The proposal, focused on ocean energy, was designed to accelerate the readiness and adoption of wave and tidal solutions by addressing the non-technical barriers that often determine whether promising technologies reach the market. This experience reinforces a clear…
16 December 2025
The GIA team wishes you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year 2026! It has been a tough year full of challenges and exciting moments. The Research Executive Agency (REA) published the Pillar II calls with an unprecedented delay of nearly half a year, pushing much of the work for applicants and us into…
12 December 2025
The European Union (EU) provides a broad suite of funding instruments to support collaborative research, innovation, and sustainable development across its Member States and associated countries. These instruments, often implemented through competitive calls for proposals, require the formation of consortia across sectors and regions. Below is a detailed overview of the principal consortium grant mechanisms, [...]
1 December 2025
Once the call deadline arrives and you submit a proposal, it undergoes an admissibility and eligibility check on the Funding and Tenders Portal. Those who pass are assigned to at least 3 independent expert evaluators who work remotely. Each expert scores the proposal against the 3 standard criteria: Excellence, Impact, and Quality and efficiency of…
1 December 2025
Horizon Europe is the EU framework program for research and innovation (2021–2027), with a budget of more than €95 billion. It supports projects that range from basic research to industrial innovation and policy coordination, aligned with priorities such as the European Green Deal, the digital transition, and sustainable development. The programme is organized into three…
14 November 2025
The new EIC Advanced Innovation Challenges (AIC) pilot is one of the main novelties of the 2026 EIC Work Programme. It introduces an ARPA-style, two-stage scheme to push demand-driven deep tech solutions from advanced prototypes into real-world use, starting with two topics: “Accelerating Physical AI: Embodied Intelligence for the Next Frontier of AI-Powered Robotics” and…
14 November 2025
The European Commission has adopted the EIC Work Programme 2026, with more than €1.424 billion available across the main funding schemes: Pathfinder, Transition, Accelerator, STEP Scale-Up, and the new Advanced Innovation Challenges pilot. The structure remains familiar if you applied in 2025, but several details have changed: how budgets are allocated, the application process, equity…