OREANDA-NEWS. Eurostars-2 participating countries and the European Commission will invest an estimated total of 72 M€ in 103 transnational innovation projects involving 27 different countries. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for 68% of all project participants and are the main beneficiaries of Eurostars funding.

These are the results of the latest evaluation round for applications (cut-off 5) to the Eurostars-2 programme supporting international innovation projects led by research and development (R&D) performing SMEs.  Since 2014, Eurostars-2 supported close to 500 projects worth 679 M€.

As a result of the evaluation, a total of 335 entities will receive public funding, the vast majority of them being SMEs (68%), followed by universities (16%), research institutes( 11%), large companies (4%) and other entities (1%). SMEs will be in charge of 79% of the project budgets.

With 299 applications received, the overall success rate for projects in the latest evaluation round (cut-off 5) was 34 %.

Top market area healthcare, top country Germany

Almost 40% of successful projects will create an innovative product, service or process for the medical/health-related market.  This is by far the highest share for a market area, followed by industrial products/manufacturing (17%), Energy and Computer-related (both 8%).

The top five countries involved in a Eurostars collaboration are Germany, with 29 projects, France (25), Sweden (22), the Netherlands (21) and Norway (19).