STUDIES ON RAIL INDUSTRY 5.0

General conditions

1. Admissibility Conditions: Proposal page limit and layout

Regarding admissibility conditions and related requirements, part A of the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2023-2025 General Annexes applies, with the following exception: the limit for a full Research and Innovation Action application is set to 70 pages.

described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes.

Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System.

2. Eligible Countries

described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes.

A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.

3. Other Eligible Conditions

described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes.

4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion

described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes.

5a. Evaluation and award: Award criteria, scoring and thresholds

are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes.

5b. Evaluation and award: Submission and evaluation processes

The award criteria included in part D of the General Annexes of the Horizon Europe – Work Programme 2023 – 2025 are complemented with additional criteria as specified in Annex VIII to this Work Programme.

are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual.

5c. Evaluation and award: Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement

described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes.

6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants

The starting date of grants awarded under this topic may be as of the submission date of the application. Applicants must duly justify the need for a retroactive starting date in their application. Costs incurred from the starting date of the action may be considered eligible.

Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum as defined in the Decision of 7 July 2021 authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025) [[This decision is available on the Funding and Tenders Portal, in the reference documents section for Horizon Europe, under ‘Simplified costs decisions’ or through this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/ls-decision_he_en.pdf]].

described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes.

Specific conditions

described in the [specific topic of the Work Programme]

Indicative budget

The total indicative budget for the topic will be 0.6 million EUR.

Applicant Private[[As defined in Article 2(5) of Council Regulation (EU) 2021/2085.]] Members of the EU-Rail part of consortia responding to this topic should provide in-kind contributions to additional activities to be declared via the template model available on the F&T portal. The amount of total in-kind contributions (i.e. in-kind contributions for operational activities and in-kind contributions for additional activities) should be no less than 1.26352 times the funding request, in aggregate, of these applicant Private Members. Any discrepancy shall be well and duly justified. In this respect, the grant agreements will set, in principle, annual deliverable on in-kind contributions for the projects selected under this topic, as well as mandatory reporting requirements, for those applicants who are Private Members of EU-Rail.

Indicative project duration

30 months. This does not preclude submission and selection of a proposal with a different project duration

Special skills and/or capabilities expected from the Applicant(s)

Applicants shall ensure that their proposals and consortium reflect the aggregated expertise to perform the activities and achieve the objectives set by the topic.

The applicants are expected to gather expertise leveraging from the knowledge of Academia and of the rail supply industry, SMEs and start-ups. In addition, applicants should leverage from the expectations of the end users, in the horizon 2030, considering the R&I contribution and vision from the EU-Rail Master Plan and Multi-Annual Work Plan.

Europe's Rail - Work Programme 2025-2026

• WP 2025-2026

Europe's Rail Master Plan

• Master Plan

Europe's Rail - Multi Annual Work Programme

• MAWP

Application and evaluation forms and model grant agreement (MGA):

Application form templates — the application form specific to this call is available in the Submission System

Application form - Part B (HE EU-RAIL, IA)

Application form - Part B (HE EU-RAIL, RIA)

Application form - Part B (HE EU-RAIL, CSA)

Evaluation form templates

Evaluation form (HE EU-RAIL, RIA/IA) 

Evaluation form (HE EU-RAIL, CSA) 

Guidance

HE Programme Guide 

Model Grant Agreements (MGA)

Lump Sum MGA 

Call-specific instructions 

Information on financial support to third parties (HE) 

Guidance: "Lump sums - what do I need to know?"

Additional documents:

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2025 – 1. General Introduction

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2025 – 13. General Annexes

HE Framework Programme 2021/695

HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764

EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509

Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment

EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement

Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual

Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions

Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement