SINGLE MARKET PROGRAMME – Social economy enterprises: capacity building and business opportunities for social circular enterprises – 2025

Objectives

• To improve quality of management and organisational excellence of SMEs in the social economy
• To allow the design and to pilot capacity building, training, coaching and advisory services. The activities developed by the selected proposals should be replicable by capturing the designed services in modular blueprints
• To increase and to reinforce circularity partnerships amongst SMEs active in the social economy and mainstream (for-profit) businesses
• To strengthen the position of social circular enterprises (SCEs) in circular economy value chains
• To boost the development of transnational partnerships trough knowledge sharing, capacity building and joint actions through transnational collaboration

Priorities

• Priority 1: To engage in sectoral activity (e.g., recycling, social services, retail, tourism, agri-food, health and care services, manufacturing, etc.)
• Priority 2: To list types of SMEs in the social economy (e.g., social enterprises, different types of cooperatives, non-profit associations, Work Integration Social Enterprises, foundations and philanthropic organisations, social service providers, etc.)
• Priority 3: To address the territorial dimension (e.g., SMEs in the social economy in a particular country, region(s), city/ies, and social economy cluster(s), or similar territorial partnerships with social economy actors involved, service providers, etc.)
• Priority 4: To assess the degree of maturity in terms of organisational excellence of the targeted SMEs in the social economy
• Priority 5: To facilitate to access to new markets for SCEs and fostering B2B collaboration on circularity (local, regional national and cross-border)
• Priority 6: To conduct local sectoral market research helps to identify economic opportunities linked to one or more potential circular streams, value chain opportunities and challenges, competitive advantage, and business partnerships in a certain geographic context (local, regional, national, or European)
• Priority 7: To improve SCEs market position and attractiveness for collaboration
• Priority 8: To test and scale new circular services and products by SCEs
• Priority 9: To support the creation of circularity hubs or clusters to promote and develop long term circular partnerships and a joint circular strategy
• Priority 10: To support the use of technologies that are adapted, developed, tested and widely used to accelerate circular offer and processes of SCE

Among financed actions

• A kick-off meeting, Mapping and assessing, training and capacity building, design programmes
• Pilot and adapt extensively the designed training and capacity building
  programmes
• Benchmarking tools and targets
• Coaching and advisory, communication and awareness raising activities
• Market research and analysis
• Five workshops per participating country in the consortium
• Three transnational in-person workshops

Eligibility

• Be a legal person
• Be a public or private entity
• Be established in one of the eligible countries:
  • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories)
  • Non-EU states: listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Single Market Programme (Click here)
• A consortium composed of:
  • at least 6 independent entities, established in at least 3 different eligible countries
  • at least 3 of the following groups of countries (see details on the call document)
  • at least 1 social economy ‘enabling organisation’ (intermediary) per participating country involved in the consortium; the organisation can be operational at national, regional or local level
  • at least 1 and maximum 2‘social economy enabling organisations’ active at EU level

Additional information

• Initial duration of the action: 36 months
• Contact: EISMEA-SMP-COSME-ENQUIRIES@ec.europa.eu

Useful

• Guidelines: Click here
• Other call documents: Click here
• Executive Agency website: Click here
• More information: Click here

• Total budget of the call: 8 million euro
• Total budget of the topic:
  • SMP-COSME-2024-SEE-01: between 1.5 million and 2 million euro
  • SMP-COSME-2024-SEE-02: 1 million euro
• Amount of the grant: up to 60.000 euro
• Funding rate: up to 90% of the total eligible costs