The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership (SBEP) is a Horizon Europe co-funded European Partnership that aims to boost the transformation towards a climate-neutral, sustainable, productive and competitive blue economy by 2030, while creating and supporting the conditions for a healthy ocean for all by 2050.

SBEP has launched its first Call for Access to Research Infrastructures, inviting private and public organisations to submit impact-oriented R&I proposals to use the portfolio of RIs made available by partners of SBEP. Applications must be impact-driven contributions to the transformation into a blue economy for a more resilient future and towards carbon neutrality targets, following an impact pathway approach.

The call is inspired by existing European Commission funded Transnational Access schemes with specific constraints, meaning that while access to the RIs is offered, the implementation of the project will be self-funded.

The call is open to blue economy stakeholders’ communities (research institutions, private companies, NGOs etc), inside and outside the Partnership Consortium from countries belonging or associated to the Partnership and beyond. In their R&I proposal for the request of RI access, applicants must address the Intervention Areas of the Partnership 2024:

1. Digital Twins of the Ocean at regional sub basin scale.
2. Blue economy sectors, development of marine multi-use infrastructures.
3. Planning and managing sea-uses at the regional level.
4. Blue Bioresources.

Proposals must address at least one geographical area among: Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea, Baltic Sea, North Sea, Atlantic Ocean. If applicable, proposals must indicate regional areas (eg Arctic Ocean, Barents Sea, Celtic Sea, Adriatic Sea, Aegean Seas etc as far as they belong to one of the European Sea Basins cited above) or their scope must be proved to be relevant for one or more above mentioned geographical areas.

Applicants may be employed by an organisation in any country of the world while the Project Leader will be employed by an organisation in one of the countries involved in the Partnership (Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine). Consortia must involve at least two members of the team employed by institutions from two different countries and requesting access to a beneficiary making RIs available as providers.