- access rights
means rights to use results or background under terms and conditions laid down in accordance with this Regulation;
- affiliated entity
means an entity as defined in Article 187(1) of the Financial Regulation;
- background
means any data, know how or information whatever its form or nature, tangible or intangible, including any rights such as intellectual property rights, that is: (i) held by beneficiaries prior to their accession to a given action;
- blending operation
means an action supported by the Union budget, including within a blending facility or platform as defined in point (6) of Article 2 of the Financial Regulation, that combines non-repayable forms of support and/or financial instruments from the Union budget with repayable forms of support from development or other public finance institutions, as well as from commercial finance institutions and investors;
- classified information
means European Union classified information as defined in Article 3 of Decision (EU, Euratom) 2015/444 as well as classified information of Member States, classified information of third countries with which the Union has a security agreement and classified information of international organisation with which the Union has a security agreement;
- contract
means an agreement concluded between the Commission or the relevant funding body with a legal entity implementing an innovation and market deployment action and supported by Horizon Europe blended finance or EIC blended finance;
- coordination and support action
means an action contributing to the objectives of the Programme, excluding R&I activities, except when undertaken under the component 'widening participation and spreading excellence' of the part 'Widening participation and strengthening the ERA';
- direct actions
means R&I activities undertaken by the Commission through its JRC;
- dissemination
means the public disclosure of the results by appropriate means, other than resulting from protecting or exploiting the results, including by scientific publications in any medium;
- European Partnership
means an initiative, prepared with the early involvement of Member States and associated countries, where the Union together with private and/or public partners (such as industry, universities, research organisations, bodies with a public service mission at local, regional, national or international level or civil society organisations including foundations and NGOs) commit to jointly supporting the development and implementation of a programme of R&I activities, including those related to market, regulatory or policy uptake;
- exploitation
means the use of results in further R&I activities other than those covered by the action concerned, including among other things, commercial exploitation such as developing, creating, manufacturing and marketing a product or process, creating and providing a service, or in standardisation activities;
- fair and reasonable conditions
means appropriate conditions, including possible financial terms or royalty-free conditions, taking into account the specific circumstances of the request for access, for example the actual or potential value of the results or background to which access is requested and/or the scope, duration or other characteristics of the exploitation envisaged;
- funding body
means a body or organisation, as referred to in point (c) of Article 62(1) of the Financial Regulation, to which the Commission has entrusted budget implementation tasks under the Programme;
- Horizon Europe blended finance
means financial support to a programme implementing innovation and market deployment action, consisting of a specific combination of a grant or reimbursable advance and an investment in equity or any other repayable form of support;
- indirect actions
means R&I activities to which the Union provides financial support and which are undertaken by participants;
- inducement prize
means a prize to spur investment in a given direction by specifying a target prior to the performance of the work;
- innovation action
means an action primarily consisting of activities directly aiming to produce plans and arrangements or designs for new, altered or improved products, processes or services, possibly including prototyping, testing, demonstrating, piloting, large-scale product validation and market replication;
- innovation and market deployment action
means an action which embeds an innovation action and other activities necessary to deploy an innovation in the market, including the scaling-up of companies, Horizon Europe blended finance or EIC blended finance;
- innovation ecosystem
means an ecosystem that brings together at Union level actors or entities whose functional goal is to enable technology development and innovation;
- international European research organisation
means an international organisation, the majority of whose members are Member States or associated countries, whose principal objective is to promote scientific and technological cooperation in Europe;
- legal entity
means a natural person, or a legal person created and recognised as such under Union, national or international law, which has legal personality and the capacity to act in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity which does not have legal personality as referred to in point (c) of Article 197(2) of the Financial Regulation;
- low R&I performing countries
means countries where legal entities need to be established in order to be eligible as coordinators under the 'widening participation and spreading excellence' component of the 'Widening Participation and Strengthening ERA' part of the Programme;
- mission
means a portfolio of excellence-based and impact-driven R&I activities across disciplines and sectors, intended to: (i) achieve, within a set timeframe, a measurable goal that could not be achieved through individual actions;
- non-profit legal entity
means a legal entity which by its legal form is non-profit-making or which has a legal or statutory obligation not to distribute profits to its shareholders or individual members;
- open access
means online access, provided free of charge to the end user, to research outputs resulting from actions under the Programme in accordance with Article 14 and Article 39(3);
- open science
means an approach to the scientific process based on open cooperative work, tools and diffusing knowledge, and includes the elements listed in Article 14;
- pre-commercial procurement
means the procurement of research and development services involving risk-benefit sharing under market conditions, and competitive development in phases, where there is a clear separation of the research and development services procured from the deployment of commercial volumes of end-products;
- pre-commercial procurement action
means an action the primary aim of which is to realise the pre-commercial procurement implemented by beneficiaries that are contracting authorities or contracting entities;
- procurement
means procurement as defined in point (49) of Article 2 of the Financial Regulation;
- programme co-fund action
means an action to provide multi-annual co-funding to a programme of activities established or implemented by legal entities managing or funding R&I programmes, other than Union funding bodies;
- project-based remuneration
means remuneration that is linked to the participation of a person in projects, is part of the beneficiary's usual remuneration practices and is paid in a consistent manner.
- public procurement of innovative solutions
means procurement where contracting authorities act as a launch customer for innovative goods or services which are not yet available on a large-scale commercial basis, and may include conformity testing;
- public procurement of innovative solutions action
means an action the primary aim of which is to realise the joint or coordinated public procurement of innovative solutions implemented by beneficiaries that are contracting authorities or contracting entities;
- recognition prize
means a prize to reward past achievements and outstanding work after it has been performed;
- reimbursable advance
means the part of the Horizon Europe blended finance or EIC blended finance that corresponds to a loan under Title X of the Financial Regulation, but that is directly awarded by the Union on a non-profit basis to cover the costs of activities corresponding to an innovation action, and which is to be reimbursed by the beneficiary to the Union under the conditions provided for in the contract;
- research and innovation action
means an action primarily consisting of activities aiming to establish new knowledge or to explore the feasibility of a new or improved technology, product, process, service or solution.
- research infrastructures
means facilities that provide resources and services for the research communities to conduct research and foster innovation in their fields, including the associated human resources, major equipment or sets of instruments;
- research output
means the results generated by a given action to which access can be given in the form of scientific publications, data or other engineered results and processes such as software, algorithms, protocols and electronic notebooks;
- results
means any tangible or intangible effect of a given action, such as data, knowhow or information, whatever its form or nature and whether or not it can be protected, as well as any rights attached to it, including intellectual property rights;
- Seal of Excellence
means a quality label which shows that a proposal submitted to a call for proposals exceeded all of the evaluation thresholds set out in the work programme, but could not be funded due to lack of budget available for that call for proposals in the work programme and might receive support from other Union or national sources of funding;
- small mid-cap
means an entity that is not an SME and that has up to 499 employees where the staff headcount is calculated in accordance with Articles 3 to 6 of Annex to Recommendation 2003/361/EC;
- smart specialisation strategy
means the national or regional innovation strategies which set priorities in order to build competitive advantage by developing and matching R&I own strengths to business needs in order to address emerging opportunities and market developments in a coherent manner, while avoiding duplication and fragmentation of efforts, including those that take the form of, or are included in, a national or regional R&I strategic policy framework, and fulfilling the enabling condition set out in the relevant provisions of the Common Provisions Regulation for 2021-2027;
- SME
means a micro, small or medium-sized enterprise as defined in Article 2 of the Annex to Recommendation 2003/361/EC;
- strategic R&I plan
means an implementing act laying out a strategy for realising content in the work programme covering a maximum period of four years, follows a broad mandatory multi-stakeholder consultation process and specifies the priorities, suitable types of action and forms of implementation to be used;
- training and mobility action
means an action geared towards the improvement of the skills, knowledge and career prospects of researchers, based on mobility between countries and, if relevant, between sectors or disciplines;
- work programme
means a document adopted by the Commission for the implementation of the specific programme in accordance with Article 14 of Decision (EU) 2021/764 or a document equivalent in content and structure adopted by a funding body;