FAIR Integration for Enhanced Research Data in the EOSC ecosystem and beyond
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See in 5 min if you're eligible for FAIR Integration for Enhanced Research Data in the EOSC ecosystem and beyond offering max €45.0M funding💰 Funding Details
Funding Description
What the Grant Funds
* Development, piloting and deployment of tools, standards and services that operationalise FAIR Digital Objects (FDOs) across the entire research data life-cycle.
* Interoperability layers and technical specifications that align EOSC with other European Data Spaces.
* AI-enabled services for automated metadata enrichment, data-quality assessment and FAIR-by-design workflows.
* Large-scale cross-sector demonstrators showing reuse of research data by industry and public authorities.
* Training, outreach, standard-maintenance and community-building activities that promote uptake of open standards, vocabularies and APIs.
Eligible Applicants
* Consortia of minimum three independent legal entities from three different EU Member States or Horizon Europe Associated Countries (HE General Annex B).
* Universities, research infrastructures, e-infrastructure providers, SMEs, large industry, public authorities and non-profits that can demonstrate operational capacity in EOSC-relevant domains.
* Organisations from non-associated third countries may participate without EU funding unless funding provisions exist in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.
Financial Details
* Type of Action: Research and Innovation Action (RIA)
* Maximum EU contribution per grant: €45 000 000
* Funding rate: up to 100 % of eligible direct costs plus 25 % flat-rate for indirect costs (Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement).
* Project duration typically 36–48 months (adapt to work plan scale).
* Special access rights: All beneficiaries must grant royalty-free access to project results to the EOSC Association for monitoring and policy purposes and must deposit all generated research data in EOSC-federated trusted repositories.
Timeline & Submission
* Single-stage call – full proposal only.
* Opening date: 06 May 2025 (17:00 Brussels)
* Deadline: 18 September 2025 (17:00 Brussels)
* Results expected Q1 2026; Grant Agreement signature Q2 2026.
Compliance Essentials
* Proposals must build on FAIR-IMPACT, FAIRCORE4EOSC outputs and coordinate with projects funded under HORIZON-INFRA-2023-/-2024-EOSC and the parallel 2025-01-EOSC-01 topic.
* All activities must respect EOSC Interoperability, Architecture, Rules of Participation and the principles of Open Science, GDPR and the AI Act (where relevant).
📊 At a Glance
🇪🇺 Strategic Advantages
EU-Wide Advantages and Opportunities under HORIZON-INFRA-2025-01-EOSC-02 “FAIR Integration for Enhanced Research Data in the EOSC Ecosystem and Beyond”
1. Single Market Access – 27 Countries, 450 + M End-Users of Research Outputs
• FAIR-by-design tools emerging from the project can be commercially or non-commercially deployed in any Member State without re-negotiating national licences, thanks to the EU’s freedom of services and data-flows directives (Open Data Directive, Data Governance Act).
• Uniform EOSC rules of participation let beneficiaries market metadata catalogues, AI-based data-quality services or training assets once and re-use everywhere, maximising return on investment.
• Harmonised public-procurement thresholds allow upselling of project results to ministries, RPOs and research e-infrastructures EU-wide.
2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange
• Consortia may integrate domain repositories (e.g. ELIXIR, CLARIN, EuroGeoSurveys) from multiple countries to co-design interoperable FAIR Digital Object (FDO) profiles, accelerating mutual recognition of standards.
• Researchers gain frictionless access to heterogeneous data spaces (health, agri-food, mobility) across borders, enabling new cross-disciplinary science.
• The call explicitly rewards coordination with other EOSC projects; pan-European engagement unlocks extra impact scores during evaluation.
3. Alignment with Flagship EU Policies
• Digital Europe Programme: delivers core building blocks (eID, AI, cloud) feeding directly into EOSC.
• European Data Strategy & Data Act: project outputs operationalise data-space interoperability and data altruism mechanisms.
• Green Deal & Mission Climate: FAIR data integration lowers duplication of environmental measurements, improving modelling and policy readiness.
• ERA Policy Agenda Action 1 (Open Science): directly addresses KPI on FAIR uptake.
4. Regulatory Harmonisation Benefits
• Working within EU legal frameworks (GDPR, Cybersecurity Act, AI Act draft) ensures that resulting AI-based repository operators are compliant everywhere from day one – a decisive market advantage.
• EOSC persistent identifier policies offer legal certainty for cross-border data citation and long-term preservation obligations.
5. Access to the EU Innovation Ecosystem
• Synergy with >500 EOSC Association members, 24 European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs), and Digital Innovation Hubs offers ready-made testbeds and early adopters.
• Partnership with standardisation bodies (CEN-CENELEC, ETSI) speeds up formal adoption of metadata or API specs developed in the project.
• Participation opens door to pan-EU talent pools (Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellows, EIT Digital students) for secondments, reducing HR costs.
6. Funding Synergies & Leverage
• Cohesion Policy funds (ERDF, Interreg) can co-finance regional EOSC nodes adopting the project’s FDO stack.
• Digital Europe & DEP-Cloud/AI calls can scale AI-driven FAIRification services beyond TRL 6 after project end.
• LIFE & Horizon-Mission projects can act as data providers and co-create domain-specific FDO extensions.
7. EU-Wide Scale and Long-Term Impact
• The EOSC-Core federation model guarantees that once a FAIR-by-design pipeline is onboarded, it becomes discoverable to >2 M EU researchers.
• Standardised, machine-actionable metadata will allow automated translation and multilingual discovery, crucial for inclusiveness across Europe’s linguistic diversity.
• Interfacing with Common European Data Spaces positions outputs for uptake by industry consortia, multiplying societal return.
8. Strategic Recommendations for Applicants
1. Build a geographically balanced consortium (min. 3 MS/AC) plus “data-space” industrial partners to showcase cross-sector reuse.
2. Reserve WP work for alignment liaisons with FAIR-IMPACT, FAIRCORE4EOSC, and EOSC-Future to satisfy dedicated Impact sub-criterion.
3. Design a sustainability plan that leverages EOSC Association Task Forces, ERIC fee models, and possible Digital Europe service contracts.
4. Include training packages translated into all EU official languages to maximise uptake and score on “widening participation”.
5. Map deliverables to concrete EU policy KPIs (e.g., % datasets FAIR, number of interoperable data spaces) to strengthen narrative.
Bottom Line: Operating at EU level transforms FAIR-by-design tooling from a niche research activity into an interoperable backbone for Europe’s Data Economy, capturing the scale, diversity and regulatory clarity that only the Union can deliver.
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Ready to Apply?
Get a personalized assessment of your eligibility and application strategy
See in 5 min if you're eligible for FAIR Integration for Enhanced Research Data in the EOSC ecosystem and beyond offering max €45.0M funding