A total of 1,569 proposals were submitted to the Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprise under phase 1 of the instrument, which provides €50,000 to support a ‘concept and feasibility assessment’, and 614 applications to phase 2, which provides between €0.5-€2.5m for ‘demonstration, market replication and R&D’, though health projects can receive up to €5m.

The highest number of applications (434) under phase 1 were submitted to the ICT topic ‘Open Disruptive Innovation Scheme’, followed by 173 applications to both the ‘Accelerating the uptake of nanotechnologies, advanced materials or advanced manufacturing and processing technologies by SMEs’ and ‘Stimulating the innovation potential of SMEs for a low carbon energy system’. The most applications came from Italy (371), followed by Spain (246) and the UK (120).

In phase 2, ICT again proved to be the most popular with 192 applications, followed by ‘Clinical research for the validation of biomarkers and/or diagnostic medical devices’, which obtained 90 proposals, and 77 proposals for the ‘Accelerating the uptake of nanotechnologies’ topic. The most applications again came from Italy (132), this time followed by the UK (113), and then Spain (97). The data for both phases covers the applicants between 18 December 2014, when the call opened, and the first cut-off date of 18 March 2015.

The ‘Dedicated SME Instrument phase 1 and 2’ runs in both the Industrial Leadership and Societal Challenges pillars and there are further cut-off dates in June and September, with the final deadline on 25 November. The Industrial Leadership scheme has a total call budget of €233,701,600, and the Societal Challenges scheme has total funding of €26,557,000.