Application Pack
The Application Pack for the Sixth Call consists of 3 main documents, all of which should be downloaded and read carefully: 

• Application Form: Parts 1-2 in Word format and Part 3 in Excel format
• Application Instructions
• Programme Manual: Part 1 How to Apply and Part 4 Common Eligibility Rules

Themes
At its last meeting, the Programme Monitoring Committee (PMC) made an analysis of the themes addressed by the 31 approved main projects so far. In addition, it took into consideration the results on the 1st ongoing evaluation exercise that has been carried out in the autumn of 2009. The Sixth call will be a targeted call where projects should demonstrate their potential to fight the severest impacts of the economic crisis, creatively seek to the creation of jobs and businesses that prevent unemployment and develop innovative solutions for finding new ways out of the economic crisis. Projects should seek to turn the economic crisis into opportunities by combining technological sectors with non-technological sectors, even taking risks to be different and collaborate where traditional and creative industries can meet. The main focus will be on business development activities related to priority 1, where there is allocated financial resources available.

 

However, the PMC has identified the following programme gap that needs to be addressed with additional project development support:

1. urban-rural partnerships for new service solutions (alternative wording: new services for rural areas linked to towns or services provided by organisations based in towns and distributed to a wider surrounding rural area.)

The following gap is still present and project proposals are welcomed:

2. maritime safety in relation to remote areas with arctic, harsh conditions

In addition, the PMC specially welcomes proposals for the following four themes that could be more strongly addressed:

3. exchange of best practise and establishment of cooperation networks between R&D institution and SMEs to increase the capacity for innovation, facilitate the design of innovation systems and strengthen competitiveness

4. cooperation and exchange of best practice between SMEs on how to address and reach markets with existing and new products

5. increased use of ICT to overcome distance

6. developing innovative product and service solutions for developing and maintaining transport infrastructure with regard to roads, railways, airports and ports under harsh climatic conditions

The PMC also welcomes applications in all other programme objectives and themes. However, it views the Priority 1 themes “implementation of ICT to modernise and to innovate industries and businesses in the Northern Periphery” and “transnational cooperation networks and knowledge transfer to develop existing and new innovative products” as already covered. In Priority 2, the theme “Developing new approaches to efficient and sustainable management and utilisation of resources”, is viewed as sufficiently covered, especially forestry projects, but new initiatives for small scale renewable energy resources and other natural resources projects, which are appropriate for the programme area are still welcomed. Applicants submitting a main project proposal under these themes need to strongly justify the need of the project and demonstrate concrete tangible added value in products and services to be developed.

Partnerships should try to cover interest in the West-Atlantic area, the North-Atlantic area even with smaller programme partner countries such as Greenland, and the Nordic countries and to encourage participation from all these different areas. Projects having pre-dominantly a cross-border character are discouraged. In addition, projects should try to demonstrate SME involvement or at least associate with SME partners where appropriate. 

Projects should realise industrial development based on collaboration between traditional and creative sectors to produce products and services, thereby, reducing the innovation and creativity gap within the Northern Periphery Area to become more competitive than other economic trading blocks.

Available Funding 
No specific budget allocation has been set for this Sixth Call. Between 2007 and 2013 the Programme will commit around €45 million to projects that address the priorities for transnational cooperation: €35.115 million of European funds (ERDF) will be available to partners in Member States and €9.192 million for partners in the Non member States. 60% of the funds is available for projects applying under Priority 1 and 40% for projects under Priority 2. After the first four calls, in which 31 projects were approved, 72 % of the programme funds for projects have been allocated. 

The recommended minimum size for a main project’s total budget is €250 000 and the recommended maximum size is €1.5 million. In general, a 60% grant rate is applied for partners in Member States and 50% for Non Member States of Norway, Iceland and Faroe Island. For Greenlandic partners a grant rate of 60% applies. Note that 10 % funding source and 20 % funding source have a grant rate of 50 %.

For the Sixth call it should be underlined that partnership could consider to balance the grant rate between different member state partners in a project partnership to ensure a broad participation from all regions, especially to ensure inclusion of regions strongly affected by the economic crisis (e.g. 65% Grant rate for partners from Northern Ireland and Ireland and a lower intervention rate for other Member State partners in the same partnership) However the overall Grant rate for member state partners in one project would stay at 60%.

In addition, financial resources in priority 1 are still available while financial resources in priority 2 are becoming limited.