The main aim of SEREN5 is to improve and professionalise the skills of the Cluster 3 (CL3) National Contact Points (NCPs) across Europe, simplifying applicants’ access to Horizon Europe (HE) calls and raising the average quality of submitted proposals. Starting from the assumption that the NCP role is crucial in order to raise the participation in HE in terms of both quality and quantity, SEREN5 overall concept is that the CL3 NCP community requires knowledge, skills, competences and a proven comprehensive suite of tools to convey a message in a multicultural and multi-disciplinary environment such the one that characterises Cluster 3 and to effectively support its broad based constituency. Therefore, the project is based on three pillars: (i) NCPs capacity building and competence development, (ii) development of targeted and high quality services (events and tools) for CL3 applicants and stakeholders , (iii) CL3 community building and general mainstreaming of CL3 NCPs in Horizon Europe.

The objective of MSCA-NET is to facilitate the transnational co-operation between National Contact Points (NCPs) for the MSCA in order to achieve a consistent and harmonized level of NCP support. Next to developing support for the facilitation of daily challenges for all NCPs, we put the focus on lowering the entry barriers for new NCPs and offer particular support services for Widening and Third Country NCPs. This will in turn simplify the access of potential MSCA applicants all over the world, in particular from Widening and Third Countries. We thus contribute to the decrease of the R&I gap between EU Member States/Associated Countries and Widening/Third Countries. We aim at a higher quality and quantity of applications from non EU-Member States/Associated Countries. We will achieve our goals by a wide array of measures: Career Development Support for NCPs in the form of Trainings, Twinnings and Mentoring; the development of a tool box for both NCPs and the scientific community; and strategic capacity development and the creation of synergies with and among MSCA stakeholders. This includes systematic outreach to the non-academic sector. The project is structured into 5 Work Packages and has 27 Beneficiaries and 4 Associated Partners from all levels of experience and among all Horizon Europe country groups. The baseline for our support services to NCPs is a benchmarking exercise whose results will be fed into the various relevant tasks. We ensure the expected project impact by strategical monitoring of the project actions and well planned communication, dissemination and exploitation measures such as the development of an innovative project dashboard. The project's outcomes will be fed back to policy developers and stakeholders within clearly defined processes in order to guarantee a sustainable impact on a wider level. MSCA-NET will run for 36 months and has an overall budget of 1'870'357 Euro. The action is under the coordination of Euresearch in Switzerland.

COSMOS4HE proposal is the successor of COSMOS2020plus and previous projects of Space NCP network. The consortium consists of NCP organisations from 16 countries balancing geographical coverage as well as diversity in level of expertise. The overall aim of COSMOS4HE is to support the professionalisation of the services rendered by the National Contact Points in Cluster 4 thematic area of Space in Horizon Europe and provide additional services targeting Space clients and applicants at EU level and beyond. The activities are structured according to the proposal’s specific objectives: 1) to increase the quality and support harmonisation of Space NCPs services, 2) to lower the entry barriers for newcomer applicants, to attract new types of players and applicants from widening countries, as well as to raise the quality of submitted proposals, 3) to increase the visibility of the thematic area of Space to new types of players by organizing matchmaking activities and ensuring bilateral communication about the crosscutting issues throughout Horizon Europe for the benefit of the European R&I community. The consortium will closely cooperate with the two other Cluster 4 NCP networks in thematic areas Digital and Industry developing synergies. Collaboration will be also sought with other NCP networks, EEN and space stakeholders aiming at maximising outreach and impact. Special focus will be put on broadening participation.

ETNA2020 is a 60-month Coordination and Support Action with the overall aim of facilitating trans-national co-operation among NCPs for ‘Smart, Green and Integrated Transport’, identifying and sharing good practices, and raising the general standard of the support to programme applicants across the EU and globally. To reach the objective above, the project will develop five main activity axes, corresponding to the projects’ specific objectives: 1)raise understanding of EU Transport R&I landscape; 2)capacity building of NCPs; 3)upgrade the set of tools for NCP assistance; 4)strengthen the participation of relevant stakeholders to Horizon 2020 funding opportunities; 5)support networking opportunities within the ‘Smart, Green and Integrated Transport’ constituency. Cross-cutting activities of dissemination and communication will addup to this main set of activities, helping to enhance their impact. ETNA2020 is the continuation and evolution of the precedent network, ETNA Plus, whose results and lessons learnt have been taken into consideration with the logic of improving the future network and in order to valorize the network’s strengths. ETNA2020 will also take into account the paradigmatic change brought by Horizon 2020. This will be reflected in ETNA2020 activities, and, in particular, in a stronger attention of the network in terms of multidisciplinary competences, consideration of related societal challenges, and linkage with other EU relevant initiatives, funding programmes and policies. Finally, the network will seek further opening to a wider target of stakeholders and businesses in the Transport field. ETNA2020 consortium comprises 16 beneficiaries, with a good mix of well-experienced and less experienced NCPs coming from Member States and Associated Countries. Besides beneficiaries, the project services will be offered to all officially appointed H2020 Transport NCPs, who will be involved as “Associated partners”.

Main objective of the action is improving the innovation management capacity of two SME target groups: (1) Beneficiaries of the SME Instrument by provision of the specialised Key Account Management services, and (2) SMEs with significant innovation activities and a high potential for internationalisation through the targeted Enhancing the innovation management services. The proposed action will implement 54 seven-day service packages during the pilot action in 2017-2018.