EUR 1,046 billion, i.e. almost 10% of the overall budget for 2020 of the EU research and innovation programme Horizon 2020, are allocated to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), announced the European Commission on 2 July. This represents the biggest annual budget MSCA ever had to fund international, intersectoral and interdisciplinary research training and mobility.
With the allocated budget MSCA is expected to fund almost 2.000 projects involving more than 10.500 researchers:
- more than 150 doctoral networks involving over 2.000 PhD candidates through Innovative Training Networks (ITN);
- more than 1.600 postdoctoral fellowships through Individual Fellowship (IF);
- approximately 80 international collaborative projects enabling more than 7.000 staff exchanges via Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE);
- roughly 20 doctoral and 20 fellowship programmes at regional and national level supporting around 500 PhD candidates and 750 postdocs via the COFUND scheme;
- almost 400 events to promote science and reach out to 2 million citizens across Europe within the European Researchers’ Night (NIGHT).
The next and last calls for MSCA funding under Horizon 2020 will open on:
MSCA Action | Call opening date | Budget |
ITN | 12 September 2019 | EUR 530.13 million |
IF | 8 April 2020 | EUR 328 million |
RISE | 5 December 2019 | EUR 80 million |
COFUND | 8 April 2020 | EUR 100 million |
NIGHT | 8 October 2019 | EUR 8 million |
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About MSCA
The Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) contribute to excellent research, boosting jobs, growth and investment by equipping researchers with the new knowledge, skills and international and intersectoral exposure to fill the top positions of tomorrow and solve current and future societal challenges.
MSCA IF call is open to fund post-docs within and beyond Europe (current deadline 11 September 2019)
IF aims at supporting the international mobility of researchers within (European Fellowships) and beyond Europe (Global Fellowships) as well as helping to attract the best foreign researchers to work in the EU. The grant usually covers two years' salary, a mobility allowance, research costs and overheads for the host institution.
Individual Fellowships (IF) are for experienced researchers to undertake their own research project at a host organisation in another country, thus gaining new skills through advanced training and possibly, intersectoral mobility.