Copernicus Incubation Programme

The objective of this call is to organise the Copernicus Incubation Programme, which aims to finance the incubation of 20 start-ups in Europe every year for 3 years.

The beneficiary of this call will be in charge of organising a regular and open selection of the best start-ups in Europe that use Copernicus and want to be incubated. Each start-up will need to demonstrate that it is backed by one of the best start-up support programmes in Europe (an incubator, an accelerator, etc.) with a track record of successfully accompanying innovative young companies, not necessarily in the space sector. The support programme must commit to including the start-up if the latter is selected in the Copernicus Incubation Programme. The functioning of the Copernicus Incubation Programme is summarised in the figure below.

Submissions should be made through the electronic submission system. This call closes on 19 April 2017 at 17.00 (Brussels time).

Questions about this call should be sent to GROW-I3@ec.europa.eu. The answers will be provided on a regular basis.

Correction: there were small mistakes in the model grant agreement and in the form B1_B2. These mistakes did not affect the content and validity of the call for proposal. Corrected versions have now been uploaded.

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Disclaimer

As explained in the Q&A session, the Commission is not accepting consortia for this call. Only single organisations are eligible. However:

• Sub-contracting is possible under the conditions explained in section 4.4 of the call
• The incubation itself can be managed by any start-up support programmes in Europe that fulfil the criteria described in part 2.1 of the call. The organiser of the Incubation programme does not have to incubate all of the 20 start-ups itself but can but can rely on other incubators
• The organiser of the programme can use partners to increase programme awareness. The selection process should remain open to all incubators and accelerators in Europe however; it should not be restricted to a network of the organiser's partners. As explained in part 2.1 of the call, "The organiser of the selection should ensure a fair treatment of all applications, with demonstrated actions to avoid potential conflicts of interests. If any member of the selection board has any stake in one applying start-up, s/he should be replaced by another person for this session of the selection board"

As a result, there are multiple ways for interested stakeholders to be involved in the Copernicus incubation Programme:

•  Reply to this call to become the organiser of the Copernicus Incubation Programme
•  Enter as a sub-contractor for parts of the call (to be discussed directly with an applicant to the call)
•  Once the competition is open, raise awareness about the Copernicus Incubation Programme
•  Once the competition is open, submit an application as a "start-up support programme", in partnership with a start-up of their own, to receive the 50K voucher