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European Innovation Council
News article2 June 2023

EIC Accelerator – change in the application submission platform

The EIC is migrating to the Electronic Submission System hosted on the Funding and tender oppportunities portal. The Portal is available with immediate effect for future and on-going applications to the EIC Accelerator.

The current EIC Artificial Intelligence (AI) Platform for applying to the EIC Accelerator is not accessible anymore as of today, due to a contractual dispute. Consequently, as an emergency measure the EIC has restructured EIC Accelerator application forms on the Funding and tenders opportunities portal and will continue to improve them.   

Since its launch under Horizon Europe, the EIC has been using the EIC AI Platform (also called EIC Accelerator submission Platform) for submission of applications for EIC Accelerator calls. This Platform was developed in a very short period of time to accommodate new features which were not possible at the time on the Funding and tenders opportunities portal. In particular, it provided diagnostics, AI tools and a methodology to allow applicants to develop business plans in a carefully structured way. 

The EIC AI Platform has been further developed and improved since 2021, but feedback received from applicant companies, EIC jury members and expert evaluators, investors and others has indicated that the Platform remains too complex, requiring extensive amounts of time and effort for companies to understand and complete their applications. The EIC Board has examined this issue and published a statement on 21 March 2023 which called for major and rapid improvements to the EIC AI Platform, in particular to shorten the length of the application form, follow more closely the business cases used for other investment purposes, and improve the user experience.  

Companies that have already worked on their application for full (Step 2) proposals for the EIC Accelerator cut-off on 7 June 2023 will be informed and receive their draft application documents by e-mail. They will be able to continue their application on the Funding and tenders opportunities portal with immediate effect, using the Portal’s application forms. To guarantee equal treatment in the evaluation, companies already having submitted a full (Step 2) application on the EIC AI Platform will also need to re-submit their proposal. These companies will also receive their application as submitted on the EIC AI Platform by e-mail. 

To accommodate the change for applicants, the deadline for submissions for the 7 June 2023 cut-off has been delayed with two weeks until 21 June 2023 at 17.00

During a short period of time companies will not be able to submit short (Step 1) applications. Short (Step 1) applications will not be submitted on the Funding and tenders opportunities portal, but on a separate EISMEA IT Platform that is to be put in place. A separate IT Platform for Step 1 proposals is needed due to its specific requirements (a short form, slide deck and video pitch). Companies who are preparing short (Step 1) applications will therefore need to wait until the new IT Platform is operational. This is expected to be ready in early July 2023. EISMEA aims to complete the evaluation of all short (Step 1) applications within four weeks, after which successful applicants have up to one year to prepare their full (Step 2) applications. For companies which already submitted their short (Step 1) applications but have not yet received the (positive) results of the evaluation, there will not be sufficient time to prepare full (Step 2) applications in time for the (delayed) cut-off  on 21 June. These companies will be notified about the results of their evaluation in due course and may apply for the following cut-off (4 October 2023) or for cut-offs in early 2024. 

More information

  • For more information on how this affects different steps of EIC Accelerator applications, please consult our Frequently Asked Questions.
  • The FAQs will be regularly updated with answers to questions that are received by the EIC from applicants.
  • The EIC organised a training session on Monday 12 June 2023 to make the audience familiar with the new application process and to support applicants. The recording of the session is available below:

     

Details

Publication date
2 June 2023