The European Social Innovation Competition 2024

Eligibilities

• Admissibility conditions: 

Applications must be submitted before the 11 June 2024 (14:59:00).

Applications must be submitted electronically via the Funding & Tenders Portal Electronic Submission System (accessible via the Topic page in the Search Funding & Tenders section). Paper submissions are NOT possible.

Applications (including annexes and supporting documents) must be submitted using the forms provided inside the Submission System (NOT the documents available on the Topic page — they are only for information).

Applications must be complete and contain all the requested information and all required annexes and supporting documents:

• Application Form Part A — contains administrative information about the applicant organisations (to be filled in directly online)
• Application Form Part B — contains the technical description of the application (to be downloaded from the Portal Submission System, completed and then assembled and re-uploaded as PDF in the system)

Your application must be readable, accessible, printable.

Applications are limited to maximum 15 pages (Part B). Evaluators will not consider any additional pages.

You may be asked at a later stage for further documents (for legal entity validation, bank account validation, ethics review, declaration of honour, etc).

Proposal page limits and layout:  applications are limited to 15 pages (Part B). Evaluators will not consider any additional pages.

2. Eligible countries: 

In order to be eligible, the applicant has to be:

• A natural person or a legal entity established in one of the Member States (including overseas countries and territories, (OCTs)) or Associated Countries to Horizon Europe. 

3. Other eligibility conditions:

• Winners of all categories, both from the Challenge and the Impact Prizes, of previous editions of the European Social Innovation Competition are not eligible.
• Applicants that have already received an EU or Euratom prize CANNOT receive a second prize for the same activities.

4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion:described in article 7 of the Rulesof contest and on  Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes
5. Evaluation and award:

Applications will be subject to a formal evaluation by a jury.

If admissible and eligible, the applications will be evaluated and ranked against the following award criteria:

• award criterion 1: Degree of innovation: the degree to which any new product, service and/or organisational or business model is new for its given context in connection to the challenge of the competition. The idea must be new and innovative within its given socio-economic and geographical cont
• award criterion 2: Usability and inclusiveness: whether the proposed solution is easy to use and affordable and can engage the largest part of EU citizens, irrespective of their background or computer skills;
• award criterion 3: Positive social Impact: the potential of the proposal to tackle the competition challenge, fostering collaboration and partnerships with relevant stakeholders. The applicant must demonstrate how the proposed solution will contribute to solving year’s challenge;
• award criterion 4: Viability and sustainability: the financial and environmental sustainability of the proposal, including a sustainability plan to make the solution durable in the medium- or long-term
• award criterion 5: Scalability and replicability: the idea’s potential to scale and be replicated across sectors, governance levels or at regional, national, European or global level;
• award criterion 6: Decentralisation and governance: improvements in transparency and accountability (while respecting privacy and/or anonymity)

Maximum points: 60 points.

Individual thresholds: 6/10 points.

Overall threshold: 36 points.

• • Applications must pass both all the individual thresholds AND the overall threshold. The prizes will be awarded to the applications with the three best scores. Other applications will be rejected.
  • Applications will be subject to a formal evaluation by a jury.
  • If there are more than 60 applications, there will be a pre-selection phase to select the best 60 applications to pass to jury review. Otherwise, all admissible and eligible applications will pass directly to jury review.
  • The pre-selection panel and jury usually have a different composition, but jury members may participate in the pre-selection panel.
  • The pre-selection panel/jury will evaluate each application against the award criteria.
  • For applications with the same score, the pre-selection panel/jury will determine a priority order according to the following approach: The score for the criterion No 1 will be given a weight of 2 and the score for criterion No 2 will be given a weight of 1.5. If two or more applications still tie for any rank, the prize will be equally divided and awarded to all applications with the same score. On the basis of the evaluation by the jury (and after the mandatory checks: ethics review, security scrutiny, legal entity validation, non-exclusion, double funding and plagiarism, etc), the awarding authority will decide on the award of the prizes to the 3 winners.
  • The 3 winners ranked 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd will receive a prize.
  • The call is open until 11 June 2024 (14:59:00).
  • The jury members will evaluate the proposals received between June and October 2024.
  • Information on the evaluation results/award will take place in October – March 2025.