SGA to the FPA for Research and Education Networks (2027)

The consortium under the selected Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) for Research and Education Networks (HORIZON-INFRA-2021-NET-01-FPA) is invited to submit a proposal for a Specific Grant Agreement (SGA-RIA) covering the FPA final period. Activities should align with the FPA objectives and action plan. Proposals shall be evaluated in accordance with the action’s specific conditions and the requirements set forth in the Commission’s invitation letter.

Expected Outcomes:

The concrete expected outcomes per area of activities should be:

Increase core network capacity and coverage:

• Progress towards delivering low-latency, Terabit-scale connectivity to meet evolving demand for secure network resources and underpin Europe’s digital science and computational infrastructures over the coming decade. Strengthen resilience by establishing uniform connectivity, ensuring multiple diverse routes to interconnect each Point of Presence (PoP) and minimize the risk of isolation.
• Further develop the fibre-optic backbone to the edges of Europe, adopting dark-fibre or spectrum solutions where technically and economically feasible, to ensure seamless, high-capacity connectivity. Incorporate scalable network equipment and robust topologies capable of handling extreme data volumes, enabling effective collaboration on large-scale scientific initiatives.

Improve and expand connectivity and collaboration service catalogue offering:

• Continue to enhance mature above-the-net-services, including the use of the underlying connectivity infrastructure and its core building blocks, security and authentication and authorisation Infrastructure (AAI), integrating cloud-based frameworks and adopting AI/ML-driven solutions where relevant.
• Advance by designing and implementing new demand-driven, reliable, secure, and multi-domain services for GÉANT’s R&E community. Focus on meeting the needs of data-intensive research across different domains (e.g. AI, advanced analytics) while maintaining smooth interconnections with other large-scale data environments.
• Continue strengthening interoperable frameworks and services for data-centric collaboration and sharing in line with findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) principles. Evaluate emerging approaches to enhance the transparency and traceability of data exchanges, ensuring reliable and efficient data sharing across Europe’s R&E ecosystem.

Leverage Trust and Identity Services:

• Continue extending interoperability to public and private digital identity platforms by consolidating ongoing eIDAS integration efforts (including advanced group access rights management).
• Further contribute to national, European and global standardisation and regulation of trust and identity services to maximise the impact of privacy-by-design and sustainable solutions developed in the R&E community; align with evolving data protection regulations and adopt best practices for robust and compliant identity management.
• Collaborate with Trust & Identity Services and standards in the public sector to continue developing interoperable solutions that uphold privacy by design and a robust trust framework across Europe.

Take GÉANT's network and partners security to the next level:

• Enhance GÉANT's network resilience by continuously updating and integrating robust practices and validated solutions—both tailored off-the shelf or developed in-house - to ensure the security of high‑speed networks across the entire NREN community, while leveraging mature solutions and further advancing emerging approaches - such as AI‑driven threat detection and adaptive monitoring - to effectively address evolving cybersecurity challenges.
• Adopt and evolve a next-generation framework for fast, federated incident responses across European NRENs and GÉANT, integrating automation, machine learning threat intelligence, dynamic orchestration, and regular simulations. Deepen cooperation with global Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) and Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs), to deliver innovative threat management.
• Provide partner organisations with an extensive training program—for experts and non-experts—to enhance their security posture and respond promptly to threats, while building on existing dashboards to create a dedicated NREN security compliance mechanism for real-time standards monitoring.
• Embed robust security principles into every stage of activity design and execution. Continuously invest in innovative security methodologies emerging from both industrial and commercial sectors to address evolving challenges such as AI-driven threats, quantum risks, and supply chain vulnerabilities.
• Ensure GÉANT's network remains secure for processing sensitive and GDPR-compliant data, while proactively managing risks to adapt to evolving threats and regulatory requirements.

Develop collaboration in new fronts:

• Establish and maintain a project‑wide framework for software service releases that incorporates the latest industry standards for quality, maintenance, and deployment, ensuring coherence and applicability across the entire GÉANT community collaboration. Define robust interface specifications to ensure seamless integration and ongoing interoperability of all delivered services.
• Ensure safe, secure, and cost‑effective service delivery through pan‑European procurement frameworks. This includes maintaining an up‑to‑date, collectively managed portfolio of commercial infrastructure‑cloud platforms—such as those established under the OCRE2024 framework—to provide European research and education institutions with state‑of‑the‑art, future‑proof cloud services that uphold digital autonomy and data sovereignty.
• Leverage the NREN federation as an open pan‑European platform for collaborative development, proof‑of‑concept trials, rigorous testing, and deployment of advanced research technologies and services—such as Fibre Acoustic Sensing, SMART Cables, Time and Frequency networks, and Quantum Communication Infrastructure—to foster innovation and enhance research collaboration.
• Advance global connectivity and foster Europe’s international cooperation by enhancing competitiveness, digital autonomy, resilience, and security—while supporting a sustainable, high-performance digital transformation for research and education.

Expected impact:

The proposals should set out a credible pathway to contributing to all the following impacts:

• State-of the art, uniform dark-fibre and spectrum-based backbone networks, are deployed and maintained across all NRENs, providing equitable, resilient, and ubiquitous secure connectivity across Europe to its edges, and enabling seamless connection beyond Europe with the global research and education community; sustainable, green IT principles are embedded into hardware procurement and infrastructure design.
• Advanced AI/ML solutions are adopted to enhance network automation and service orchestration ensuring detailed, real-time visibility, managing exponential traffic growth from new devices and services, and reducing downtime and repair intervals, all while supporting data-intensive research workflows.
• GÉANT’s advanced connectivity, trust, and security infrastructures are leveraged enabling robust, scalable cross-sectoral research collaboration and accelerating Europe's digital transformation; cybersecurity resilience is scaled up by advancing AI-driven cybersecurity frameworks and federated incident response mechanisms, complemented by robust identity solutions (eduGAIN and eIDAS).
• Europe’s research and education networks are at the forefront of the fast-evolving landscape on quantum, AI, HPC, cloud, time and frequency networks (TFN) and other new technologies enabling network innovations.
• Cloud infrastructures are expanded and consolidated under the Open Clouds for Research Environments (OCRE) initiative, ensuring comprehensive and secure data orchestration, and cloud service frameworks, to effectively reduce reliance on non-European service providers while reinforcing Europe's digital sovereignty.
• GÉANT’s incubator pathways are expanded through bottom-up experimentation and user-centric approach to sustain and drive European innovation capacity; and tools and services based on emerging technologies, such as distributed acoustic sensing, quantum-based tools and integrated HPC solutions are evaluated and, where appropriate, operationalised.
• The governance, decision-making, multi-stakeholder coordination frameworks, and strategic oversight of GÉANT are streamlined to maintain agile and continuous engagement among all NRENs.
• Europe's global connectivity leadership is supported through international research collaboration.

The general conditions, including admissibility conditions, eligibility conditions, award criteria, evaluation and award procedure, legal and financial set-up for grants, financial and operational capacity and exclusion, and procedure are provided in parts A to G of the General Annexes.

Specific conditions:

6-years Framework Partnership Agreement for Research and Education Networks with identified beneficiary and specific grants awarded to identified beneficiary for Research and Innovation Action under the Framework Partnership Agreement.

In this action the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

Purchases of equipment, infrastructure, services or other assets used for the action must be declared as depreciation costs.

Equipment, infrastructure, services or other assets (such as IRUs) purchased specifically for the action (or developed as part of the action tasks) may exceptionally be declared as full capitalised costs taking into account that their life span may extend after the duration of the action and beyond the FPA coverage.

The standard evaluation criteria, thresholds, weighting for award criteria and the maximum rate of co-financing for this type of action are provided in parts D and G of the General Annexes. with the following exceptions for the evaluation criteria:

“The following additions to the general award criteria apply:

For the criterion Excellence:

• Clarity and pertinence of the project’s objectives, including their relevance to the overarching goals of the FPA. Extent to which the proposed work is ambitious, and goes beyond the state-of-the-art.
• Soundness of the proposed methodology, including the business model approach on service delivery and provision of innovative services and the related metrics.
• Effectiveness and agility in developing new services according to the needs of a wide user base across multiple disciplines for excellent science and research.

Eligibility conditions: The conditions are described in General Annex B. The following exceptions apply: Subject to restrictions for the protection of European communication networks.