European Commission Contest for Innovative Public Initiatives Open

The prizes will reward excellence and innovation in successful, already running, and innovative public initiatives managed by any national, regional or local public administrations from EU Member States or Associated Countries of the 7th Research Framework Programme. Awarded initiatives will have made significant improvements in citizens' lives by strategies, services, networks, processes and infrastructure offered by public administrations throughout Europe. Among the eligibility criteria is also the requirement that the on-going initiative or programme has been running for at least 1 year but not longer than 4 years at the time of submission.

The awarded money of 100,000 EURO per prize winner will be used by the winning public administration to scale up and expand their initiative thereby leveraging and inducing further excellence and innovation in public administration. The Commission will remain in close contact with the winners and ensure follow-up for the implementation of the subsequent stages of their initiatives.

The Commission wants to recognise the outstanding achievements of public administrations in 3 categories: Initiatives for citizens, Initiatives for firms, and Initiatives for education and research. In each of the three categories, monetary prizes will be awarded to three best initiatives. Under the ‘Initiatives for citizens’ category transport-related projects, for instance for eco-friendly public transport, are eligible to apply.

The contest opened today, 17 September 2012.

Deadline for submitting applications is 15 February 2013 at 17:00 (Brussels local time).

Further information on the contest and the link to the online application can be found on: http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/index_en.cfm