Southeast Asia – Europe Joint Funding Scheme for Research and Innovation

Southeast Asia – Europe Joint Funding Scheme for Research and Innovation in the thematic areas of Health, Environment /Climate Change is open now!

Europe-Southeast Asian Joint Call Projects must comprise of at least 3 partners (either 2 different Southeast Asian partners and 1 European partner or 2 different European partners and 1 Southeast Asian partner) and cover the thematic areas of Health (Anti-microbial drug resistance, Emerging infectious diseases), Environment/ Climate Change (Adaptation/Resilience of food production systems, Impacts of Climate Change on Ecosystems/Biodiversity) to enhance bi-regional co-operation and develop new partnerships as well as strengthen existing ones.

Scope of the projects

Funding will be provided for the duration of a maximum of three years (36 months). They should start earliest in January 2018.

Within the framework of the Joint Call, funding can be applied for:

• Personnel costs
• Equipment and consumables (project-related miscellaneous expenses and project-related larger equipment)
• Mobility costs (exchange research visits between Europe and Southeast Asia. Travel costs, living expenses and visa costs are eligible for funding.
• Other costs (Costs which cannot be classified under the previous cost items but are required for the project implementation, such as costs related to dissemination, intellectual property, demonstration, market search, management, organisational and subcontracting costs).

The eligibility of cost items and their calculation is according to respective national regulations. You can download the respective national regulations for your country in the attachments section.

Who can apply?

Proposals may be submitted by public legal RTD (Research and Technology Development) entities, higher education institutions, non-university research establishments, companies (all depending on national regulations). The participation of SMEs, industries and clusters in consortia is recommended. Eligibly criteria can be found in the respective national funding regulations.

Countries contributing to the Call are: Belgium (Wallonia), Cambodia, France, Germany, Lao PDR, The Philippines, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam,

Institutions not explicitly mentioned as recipients might be included in consortia if they provide their own funding (non-eligible organisations might join on their own costs). Other entities may apply if the respective national regulations allow it.

Applicants should discuss their intentions and confirm eligibility with their respective National Contact Point before submitting a proposal.

Application Process

Project proposals are to be submitted electronically using the PT-Outline web tool.

Please note: Some funding agencies might require that applicants from their respective country submit specific complementary documents at the national level, in addition to the PT Outline web tool. Please check the additional requirements stated in the national regulations of the countries represented in your project before submitting your proposal.

Each project consortium has to choose a Project Coordinator from among all partners of the respective project eligible for funding (partners participating on their own budget may not be coordinators). Only one proposal per project should be submitted using PT-Outline. The Project Coordinator is responsible for submitting the proposal on behalf of its project consortium.  The responsibilities of the Project Coordinator are to keep the other project partners updated on the submission process, to ensure the internal management and coordination of the project consortium and to constitute the main contact for the Joint Call Secretariat.

All proposals must be written in English only.

The PT-Outline electronic template consists of four pages (General information, Project coordinator, Project partners and Project description) that need to be filled-in online. In addition, a word document has to be downloaded from the Project description page of PT-Outline, filled-in with the requested information, converted to PDF format and then uploaded again.

Evaluation Process

The evaluation process includes the following steps.

Eligibility check

The Joint Call Secretariat (JCS) will check all pre-proposals to ensure that they meet the formal criteria of the call (date of submission, number and country distribution of participating research partners, inclusion of all necessary information in English and length). The JCS will forward the proposals to the National Contact Points who will perform a check for compliance to country/regional rules as described in the “Guidelines for applicants”.

Please note that proposals not meeting the formal criteria or the national/regional eligibility criteria and requirements may be declined without further review.

Peer review

Independent scientific experts in the relevant thematic research fields will carry out the anonymous peer review of the eligible project proposals according to evaluation criteria set up by the funding parties. Each proposal will be evaluated by three evaluators (at least one Southeast Asian and one European peer reviewer). The peer reviewers will be nominated by the Southeast Asian and European National Contact Points in cooperation with the funding parties.

The evaluation is done using the following evaluation criteria:

Scientific/technological excellence and innovativeness of the project idea (scoring from 0 to 10)

• Sound concept, quality of objectivesInnovativeness of the project idea: capacity of a project to contribute to the development of a new technology, service or product
• Quality and effectiveness of the methodology and associated work plan
• Good balance between the technology/knowledge available at each participating team
• Complementarity of qualifications and relevant experience of the coordinator and the individual participants/participating teams

Potential impact and expected outcomes of the project (scoring from 0 to 10)

• Social and/or market related impactPotential to meet market, economical and societal needs and significant exploitation potential
• Prospects for establishing efficient and sustainable partnership within the network, including transfer of know-how and experience
• Appropriateness of measures for the dissemination and/or exploitation of trans-national projects results, and management of intellectual property

Management, Transnationality and Cooperation (scoring from 0 to 10)

• Quality and effectiveness of the management structure and distribution of tasks
• Added value of transnational cooperation
• Appropriate allocation and justification of the resources to be committed (budget, staff, equipment) 

Once the peer review process is finalise, the JCS will send the full proposals and pooled reviews to the Scientific Council (SC) members. The SC will meet to discuss each proposal and, after consideration of the evaluation criteria, external reviews and their own discussions, the SC will make a classification of the proposals and rank proposals recommended for funding.

Funding decision

Based on the ranking list established by the SC and on available funding, the PSC will take a final decision (subject to budgetary considerations). The Joint Call Secretariat will communicate to all project coordinators the final decisions about their proposal together with a review summary from the SC.