Eureka’s founding principles centre on international cooperation in research, development, and innovation. Its projects have balanced contributions from the participating organisations in its network countries and beyond.
Eureka promotes bottom-up, market-oriented projects, allowing organisations to freely decide their focus in any technology area based on their needs for progression. Since its foundation, only civilian purpose research and innovation has been funded through Eureka programmes.
Programmes
Eureka achieves its mission through a portfolio of programmes tailored to support organisations at every stage of their innovation journey. These programmes support:
- research and development projects aimed at commercialising new products, processes, or services,
- market exploration projects,
- participation in networking events,
- and engagement with multinational corporate venture teams.
Organisations that benefit from Eureka programmes create marketable innovations that improve lives, increase revenue, form lasting international business relationships, launch pilot projects with corporates, and attract private investment.
European Partnership on Innovative SMEs
The European Partnership on Innovative SMEs is co-funded by the European Commission through Horizon Europe and 37 Eureka countries. It champions innovative small- and medium-sized enterprises: companies that do not necessarily have a previous research and development track record but demonstrate they can achieve excellent results. Close to one billion euros of public national and EU funding will be committed to the partnership over the period 2021-2027, with a leverage effect of 1:7 for private investment.
Of Eureka’s programmes and support tools, Eurostars-3, Innowwide, the Investment Readiness programme, and the Fast Track to the EIC Accelerator are included within the partnership.
Eureka Clusters
Eureka Clusters are communities of corporates, small- and medium-sized enterprises, universities, research institutes, and end-users focused on industry-defined strategic technology areas. Each of Eureka’s five Clusters is managed by an independent office. The Cluster offices launch calls for projects, supported by Eureka’s network, organise community activities, like networking events, and provide guidance to participating organisations.
Eureka Clusters are approved by Eureka’s network to run calls for proposals and other services through which ministries and funding agencies can support international research, development, and innovation projects.