Funding programme

The European Union’s Multimedia Actions therefore aim to engage the public in EU policy-making by informing them about European issues from pan-European points of view, going beyond local or national angles. Activities under this budget line support producing and disseminating independent news and programmes on EU affairs with full editorial independence.

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Call overview

The pilot project aims to contribute to enhance the Union’s autonomy in the media domain, addressing these technological challenges, and helping equip citizens and media professionals with informative content of relevance to citizens.

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Call details

The pilot project aims to contribute to enhance the EU’s autonomy in the media domain, respond to current technological challenges and opportunities allowing to provide citizens and media professionals with a broader range of informative content. For this purpose, this project shall provide solutions allowing citizens to search informative content provided by public and/or private TV stations and online news and information/content platforms in Member States and provide translated subtitles of news and documentaries in multiple European languages.

The project will seek to establish a platform, as well as a technology and  content alliance among interested actors in Member States for facilitating access to rich and varied  informative online content from TV stations and online news and information platforms across Member States, preparing also to harness the potential of new technologies including upcoming augmented reality content and media formats.

The platform should make use of available resources to provide better access for content aggregation, discovery and search with a recommendation system functioning in line with democratic values, a translation system, and facilitating Video on Demand streaming, thereby providing a pluralistic view of content.

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Activities to be funded

The following activities should be part of the expected actions of the project:

• Providing an analysis of existing and anticipated market and user needs to make sure the project meets these needs.
• Carrying out an analysis of platform requirements including identification of existing building blocks and of needs for developing new building blocks to meet market and user needs.
• Designing and implementing the technical setup and functional operation of the platform. This includes the development of new building blocks (if necessary), followed by the integration of all the necessary available building blocks (e.g. security, DRM).
• Conceptual development and prototypical implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools for real time and non-real time translation/language support and recommendation.
• Preparation of the platform and demonstration of immersive and shared viewing experiences (AR/VR).
• Elaborating a strategic and operational content population planning (with clear milestones and actions). This includes content acquisition, proper content curation/population including meta tagging and billing/licensing management. The plan should also contain a clear strategy for the promotion of the platform.
• Definition of the platform’s governing arrangements, such as operational concept and organisational oversights, legal and compliance activities
• Putting the platform in operation, testing, and providing. Content population, user experience testing, performance testing.
• Once functional, the platform should be going through several rounds of performance optimisation involving final users and integrating their feedback.

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Eligibility

In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must be legal entities (public or private bodies) and be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:

• EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
• non-EU countries as mentioned in the work programme: candidate countries or potential candidate countries

Proposals may be submitted by any of the following applicants or combinations of:

• Media and entertainment/infotainment companies
• Broadcasting stations / online news and information/content platforms
• Technology companies
• Education service providers
• News service providers

Applications from consortia combining entities with different profile/expertise/industry segments are encouraged.

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Consortium composition

Proposals must be submitted by a consortium consisting of at least 5 applicants/beneficiaries (affiliated entities do not count for the minimum number of applicants) which complies with the following conditions: Minimum 5 entities from 4 different eligible countries.

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Duration

Project duration should normally range between 15 and 18 months (extensions are possible, if duly justified and processed through an amendment).

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Budget

The EC available budget is EUR 2,500,000. This co-financing is limited to a maximum of 80% of the total eligible costs of the action.

The Commission expects to fund 1 project. This does not preclude the submission/selection of a proposal requesting a lower amount.

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