The EIT spurs innovation and entrepreneurship across the European Union. To further enhance its impact and to incentivise the innovations needed to meet new societal challenges, the EIT will gradually expand its portfolio of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) from 2014 to 2020.

As established in the EIT's Strategic Innovation Agenda (SIA) and Horizon 2020, the first two new KICs, to be established in 2014, will address the thematic fields of:

1. Innovation for healthy living and active ageing; and
2. Raw materials: sustainable exploration, extraction, processing, recycling and substitution.

Today marks the first step in the process leading up to the designation of the new KICs in December 2014. The Selection Criteria build on the principles set in the EIT Regulation and the EIT's core values of impact, excellence and partnership. Aligned with the EIT's mission, these criteria will ensure that the designated KICs have all the elements that make a KIC a KIC.

The EIT will then publish the Framework of Guidance, the EIT Financial Rules and the EIT Principles for financing, monitoring and evaluating KIC activities in January 2014 followed by the launch of the Call on 14 February 2014.

For more information and access to all relevant documents on the EIT 2014 Call for KICs, please visit the dedicated webpage.