Special Session 7: Cascaded Funding in SNS Program – Accomplishments, Challenges, and Future Potential
Friday, 5 June 2026, 9:00-10:30, room Sala de Conferencias 2 (2.1) (first floor)
Session chair:
- Halid Hrasnica (Eurescom / 6G-SANDBOX)
The SNS Research and Innovation program, as well as other EU programs, applies so-called Cascade Funding in a number of projects, where Financial Support for Third Parties (FSTP) is ensured, to involve entities which are not members of the project consortia (3rd parties) in its ongoing activities and provide their unique contributions. The 3rd Parties are being involved through mechanism of competitive open calls, organized by the parent projects, granting funding for smaller, so called, sub-projects which are defined to provide particular functionalities or infrastructures to the parent projects, perform experimentation within the parent projects’ infrastructures, etc.
Until now, more than 259 Open Call projects have been funded in the scope of the Cascading Funding within the SNS JU Programme, organized by 9 parent projects, involving more than 347 stakeholders, the third parties. Moreover, the to select the best open call proposals, the parent projects invested significant efforts o evaluate more than 600 contributions and organized corresponding submission and evaluation process. On the other hand, the goal of the open call mechanism is to optimize the distribution of funds through a lighter funding mechanism and, with it, to further support the growth of technological and research activities.
The session will discuss various aspects of the open calls, in particular how far the expectations of the Financial Support for Third Parties have been fulfilled, are the goals of the parent projects in terms of technological advancement met, what are the gains of the open call involvement for the 3rd parties, best practices from implementations of the open call projects, how can we improve for implementation of the open calls und the future projects and programs?
Programme
Introduction – Halid Hrasnica (Eurescom / 6G-SANDBOX)
Purpose and expectations on the OC mechanism in the SNS programme – Claudio Scalese (EC, SNS JU Office)
Implementation of Open Calls by parent SNS projects:
Experimentation on networking aspects
– 6G-SANDBOX – Matteo Pagin (Keysight)
Large-scale multi-stakeholders’ trials
– 6G-PATH – Luís Cordeiro (OneSource)
– FIDAL – Ioannis Routis (NOVA)
– IMAGINE-B5G – James Clarke (SETU)
Focused application areas
– ENVELOPE (Connected and Automated Mobility – CAM) – Konstantinos Katsaros (ICCS)
Impact of Open Calls from 6G Industry Association perspective – Didier Bourse (Nokia, 6G IA)
SNS parent projects about open calls – survey results – Halid Hrasnica (Eurescom / 6G-SANDBOX)
Open discussion
