Horizon Europe Office in Ukraine, NRFU provided personal consultation for representatives of the defence technology sector

On August 27, the team of Horizon Europe Office in Ukraine, NRFU held personal consultation for interested parties in EU grant programmes, in particular the Horizon Europe Programme. Serhii Kutishchev, CEO of Ukraine Tech LLC, applied to the Office’s specialists. The company is engaged in the development and manufacture of heavy combat unmanned ground systems and has developed a concept for the high-quality implementation of such systems. Therefore, the applicants were interested in the possibilities of getting EU funding in the field of defence technologies.

The Office’s specialists provided comprehensive answers regarding available grant opportunities and the specifics of Ukrainian companies’ participation in European Defence Fund calls as a part of Horizon Europe with a separate budget and Horizon Europe itself. In particular, Maksym Kolisnyk, Leading Officer, presented the current grant opportunities.

He told the business representative in detail about the terms of the open call HORIZON-EIC-2025-UKRAINIANTECH-01 to support Ukrainian tech SMEs with an indicative funding of EUR 300-500,000, covering 100% of costs with a maximum project duration up to 2 years. In addition, the expert presented the EIC Pre-accelerator – Widening for countries expanding their activities in the field of research and innovation (widening countries). Under this call, applicants can also receive funding of €300-500,000, covering 70% of costs and 30% co-funding. In addition, actual information on the European Innovation Council’s instruments was provided, in particular: open calls for the Pathfinder, Transit, Accelerator and Scale-up strategic technologies.

The expert also spoke in detail about the specifics of Ukrainian applicants’ participation in the cascade funding within the European Defence Fund calls 2025. We would like to remind you that advice on looking for partners for European Defence Fund calls, prepared by experts of Horizon Europe Office in Ukraine, NRFU, is available on the Office’s website at the following link.

The participants discussed prospective ideas for preparing project applications in the area of interest for Ukraine Tech LLC, and experts gave recommendations on intellectual property protection and possible ways to raise funding under the other components of the Horizon Europe Programme.