The European Commission has launched a call for proposals under the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) Specific Work Programme SME, with the objective to promote entrepreneurial culture of young people, and entrepreneurship education. The projects funded will be part of the support given by the European Commission to the implementation of the Small Business Act.

The Official Journal of the European Union, OJEU, has published in January 27th, 2009 a Call for Proposals to promote entrepreneurial culture of young people, and entrepreneurship education (ENTR/CIP/09/E/N02S001), which aims to support the implementation of the Small Business Act, in particular its Principle 1, and of the Oslo Agenda for Entrepreneurship Education in Europe by promoting winning ideas in the field of education for entrepreneurship and in improving the entrepreneurial mindsets of the European youth.

Two priority areas have been defined within this Call for Proposals:

Priority Area 1:

• Establishing a cross-European workshop programme for entrepreneurship professors in higher education to share knowledge and learn from practitioners (Entrepreneurship Summer Academy).

Priority Area 2: Including the following objectives:

• Creating a common on-line platform for entrepreneurship educators and related practitioners.
• Creating a European Entrepreneurship Educators Network.
• Fostering entrepreneurship among female university graduates.
• Fostering the entrepreneurial mindsets of young people outside the educational environment.
• Developing innovative and practice-based teaching material on entrepreneurship for higher (university) education, in particular by using real cases and experiential learning.

All the activities funded under this Call must have a clear European added value. If any proposal does not fall into the above-mentioned priority areas, it can also be selected, under priority area 2, if it corresponds to an initiative listed in the Oslo Agenda for Entrepreneurship Education in Europe and provide a major added value.

Any public or private entity can participate in this call for proposals (Public administrations, educational institutions, NGOs, associations, foundations, training providers, chamber of commerce, business associations, etc), provided that they can prove to have the specific experience requested.

These entities may be based in any EU Member State, or EEA countries, as well as accession countries, candidate countries and other countries participating to the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme - CIP (Albania, Croatia,  Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Israel, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey).

Available Budget for projects under ENTR/CIP/09/E/N02S001 Call for Proposals

The maximum budget allocated for the operation will be around 2.75 M€, including no more than two projects for priority area 1 and 10 for priority area 2. Only projects requiring a minimum EU funding of 0.2 M€ , but no more than 0.5 M€ will be supported. The maximum duration of the projects will be between 15 and 36 months.

Applicants must send their proposals by April, 20th, 2009.

Further informations as well as relevant documents related to ENTR/CIP/09/E/N02S001 call for proposals are available at the Commission's enterprise website.