SoS2LearnDBS 1st Open Call for Transition Agendas (OC-TAg1-SoS2LearnDBS-2026)

‘Mission community actors’ are defined broadly and could be various types of individuals, public or private sector entities or other actors, located in Member States and Associated Countries, as long as they are proposing activities contributing clearly to the Mission objectives.

Since the Mission Ocean and Waters Implementation PlanPDF defines basins as “larger naturally, economically, societally, culturally and politically interconnected areas comprising multiple regions (as administrative entities) and extending over multiple Member States or associated countries along a river, or a sea”, only regions of Member States and/or Associates Countries or associations including such regions shall be considered for the geographical delimitation of the respective lighthouse areas. This means that, in addition to the standard eligibility conditions described in General Annex B, the consortium must include as beneficiaries at least two regions from the respective lighthouse areas in Member States and/or Associate Countries or associations thereof. Provided that the conditions on the minimum consortium composition are met, any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, is eligible to participate.

Beneficiaries should be either 1) regions represented by the relevant public authorities, or 2) associations of the regions.

In the context of topic HORIZON-MISS-2024-OCEAN-02-01, ‘associations thereof’ refers to ‘associations of at least two regions’. It concerns a group of two or more regions registered as members of an association whose scope of activity falls within one of the eligible basins.

The maximum amount of financial support for community-led actions to be granted to each third party is EUR 500,000 but may be higher if duly justified in the proposal. This applies to each beneficiary in the consortium of the community-led action, rather than the consortium as a whole. The amount to be awarded per grant is between EUR 200,000 and EUR 2 million.

The maximum amount of financial support for transitional agendas is up to EUR 100,000 for each grant. It is a maximum amount per grant regardless of the number of beneficiaries (it could be one beneficiary or a consortium with several beneficiaries).

As described in the topic text on p.164-165 of the Horizon Europe 2023-2025 Work ProgrammePDF: "Each proposed action under this topic should address one of the four basins covered by the Mission 'Restore our ocean and waters by 2030'301 and should foresee all of the following types of support to Mission communities of actors of the respective basin: financial support to third parties (also referred to as cascading grants) to community-led pilot actions; cascading grants for transition agendas; and technical assistance, to be provided by the consortium." Hence, each proposal is expected to address one of the four basins covered by the Mission ’Restore our ocean and waters by 2030’.

In the context the topic HORIZON-MISS-2024-OCEAN-02-01, ‘regions’ refers to geographical areas at sub-national level, defined as NUTS 2 and 3, corresponding to actual administrative units with their own representation/government. For more information about NUTS (Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics), please see the Eurostat website.

Please note that the specific condition on the procedure: “Evaluation carried out by EU staff” should be interpreted to mean “Evaluation committee partially composed of EU representatives” in accordance with Article 29(1) of the HE Regulation and by extension General Annex F of the General Annexes.