The first call for porposals launched by the European GALACTICA project closed on May 19 after receiving 84 proposals from 137 innovative European SMEs. Spain has been the European country with the highest participation (34 SMEs), followed by Germany (25), Italy (17) and France (11). GALACTICA aims to promote value chains based on advanced manufacturing in the textile and aerospace sectors.

The GALACTICA consortium will evaluate the proposals and select the best projects, which will get up to €100,000 in funding. The evaluation will take place between May and June, and the list of projects to be financed is expected to be available in July.

GALACTICA project has a budget of €1.2M plans to finance up to 28 projects (20 under the Pioneer Acceleration instrument and 8 Orbital Projects).

AEI Tèxtils (coordinator), Technological Corporation of Andalusia (CTA) and ATEVAL are the Spanish partners of this project. It is made up of 10 European partners and funded by the European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. To achieve the mobilization of Spanish companies, the collaboration between the consortium and the Andalusian Knowledge Agency, the Spanish Aerospace Platform and Andalusia Aerospace has been crucial.

CTA is the entity responsible for the implementation of the calls, the selection of external experts, the evaluation of the proposals and the subsequent monitoring of the financed SMEs. The second call for GALACTICA will be launched in January 2022.