The Priority Area 8 (PA 8) on Competitiveness calls the EUSDR countries stakeholders for their attention to the launch of the new instrument START – Danube Region Project Fund – Call 1. This is a new pilot initiative that provides seed money facility for kick-start project especially small EU grants that help to develop the Danube Region.
START is cooridinated by Priority Area 10 “Institutional Capacity and Cooperation” (PA 10) of the City of Vienna. The First Call for Proposal has been open by PA 10 on July 18, 2014 at web site http://www.danube-capacitycooperation.eu/pages/start where all related documents are available:
– Guidelines for Applicants
– Application form
– Letter of Support
The deadline for the online applications are September 16 and 17, 2014 with closure at 24:00 CET on the 17th September 2014.
After the closing call (17th of September) the applications will be forwarded by PA 10 to PACs for the relevant Priority Area for pre-selection. The PACs and their Steering Group are experts in the matters addressed by the project applicants and can best assess the relevance of the project applications for the EUSDR and in particular for their Priority Area.
The key aspects of the PA 8 particularly with regard to the relevance of the competitiveness of enterprises are:
- SMEs (Strengthening technical management internationalization; Smart Specialization; Clustering)
- Entrepreneurship Education, Vocational Training, and Qualification
- Innovation and Technology Transfer
- Environmental Technology and Energy Efficiency
- Governance (Enhancement of institutional Capacity; Capacity of Business Organizations
The decision making will be taken by the START Selection Committee, that is composed by the respective PA-Coordinators and chaired by PA 10.
