The European Commission has published a new “Practical Guide to EU funding opportunities for Research and Innovation”, which will help to all interested stakeholders to find the right funding programme for their projects in a user-friendly and comprehensive way.

A few months ago, the European Commission announced the development of a guide to help researchers to select the right programme for their activities and even combine funds from different sources. The definitive version of the guide, which was enriched with all the comments and suggestions received by the Commission, is now available.

The Guide provides a description of each programme including the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP), as well as the Structural funds (European Regional Development Fund and European Social Fund) and the Cohesion Fund, explaining their structures, their overall budgets, who is eligible and how to apply.

The Commission suggests in this Guide that, although these three funding sources individually considered, already act as effective tools in support of research, technological development and innovation (RTDI), their value can be further enhanced by combining them.

In addition to the description of the funds, the guide gives advice on how to develop project ideas, find the relevant funding sources and also how to mix funding sources, not forgetting to list useful links to the respective funding websites. Last but not least, a checklist and scorecard facilitate the identification of funding potentials at every stage of developing and implementing a project.

The guide, which is currently available in pdf format but will soon also be accessible as a web-based application, can now be downloaded on CORDIS, the Community Research and Development Information Service. The guide will soon be available in other Community languages.