On June 2nd, the applicants submitting their proposal to the June cut-off date were surprised by the information that the Artificial Intelligence Platform is not accessible anymore. A »contractual dispute« was stated as a reason.
This resulted in a series of events, among others that the EIC is migrating to the Electronic Submission System hosted on the Funding and tender opportunities portal.
Companies who have already worked on their application for Step 2 proposals have been informed and have received their draft application documents via email, required to use the Portal`s application forms with immediate effect.
To accommodate the change for applicants, the deadline for submissions for the 7th of June 2023 cut-off has therefore been delayed by two weeks until the 21st of June 2023 at 17:00.
As for the Step 1 proposals, during a short period, the companies will not be able to submit their proposals and need to wait until the new IT platform is operational, which is expected to be ready in early July 2023.
Major improvements to the platform
The EIC has been using the AI Platform since its launch under Horizon Europe, and although it has been further developed and improved since 2021, the feedback received from applicant companies, EIC jury members, expert evaluators, and investors indicated, that the Platform remains too complex, requiring extensive amounts of time and effort for companies to understand and complete their applications. Following the feedback assessment, the EIC Board published a statement in March this year that announced major improvements to the Platform, in particular as regards three elements, as follows:
- Recommendation 1: The full proposal structure will be reduced to a business case of no longer than 50 pages, a slide deck, and a data pack.
- Recommendation 2: The user interface will undergo major improvements to make the platform more readable and easier to assess for evaluators.
- Recommendation 3: The usability for evaluators and investment decisions will be improved to ensure clear alignment with the EIC evaluation criteria and with more emphasis put on the slide deck.
Karmen Vidonja Ozvatič, Mag.
Karmen is an accomplished expert in national and EU-level funded programs, bringing almost 20 years of professional experience in this field. She has an in-depth understanding of the struggles and challenges involved in the application procedures and a profound knowledge of how EU funding mechanisms work. Karmen has worked on several large-scale projects, providing her with a unique perspective and valuable insights into the successful management of the transition from national to EU-funded projects. Her expertise has helped numerous organizations secure funding for their projects and achieve their business goals.