Standards are at the core of a resilient European single market, enabling companies to demonstrate compliance with EU regulations, creating a level playing field for businesses and increasing consumer confidence. For research and innovation projects, embedding standardisation objectives from the proposal stage strengthens both the case put to funders and the long-term routes to impact. Aligning early with the right Technical Committees and Working Groups helps ensure the uptake and wider use of new technologies and inventions, guarantees interoperability and compatibility, and supports quality and safety requirements down the line. In certain domains, meeting a harmonised standard is not simply beneficial but a precondition for market access.
Contributing to standards is often an objective of many R&I projects, sometimes reflected in a dedicated task, deliverable or milestone. Building this into a proposal from the outset, rather than addressing it once a project is underway, allows consortia to frame standardisation ambitions credibly and to plan for the resources needed to pursue them. However, identifying the relevant standardisation landscape at proposal stage — the right Technical Committees, the right entry points, the right framing — can be difficult to do without dedicated expertise, and proposal deadlines rarely leave room for this kind of research.
The Open Call is continuously open, covering topics aligned with the priorities set out in the EU Strategy on Standardisation. By applying, research consortia preparing proposals — including those targeting Horizon Europe, Digital Europe, EUREKA and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, as well as national funding programmes — can access professional, personalised support delivered by a matched standardisation expert, timed to fit their submission deadline. Projects that go on to secure funding can return for the Mentoring Service once underway.
How to apply
Access to the Proposal Support is a two-step process.
Step 1: Register on the HSbooster.eu II website
Before applying for any service, projects must first register on our website. Registration requires basic details about you and your organisation, including your name, job title, company type, country and a link to your LinkedIn, ORCID or institutional profile. This creates your account and allows us to contact you about your application.
Step 2: Submit your application via the Standardisation Open Platform (SOP)
Once registered, log in to sop.hsbooster.eu to submit your application for the Proposal Support Service. You will be asked to provide information on your proposal objectives, the topic, its relevance to standardisation, and the specific support you are seeking.
Applying for the booster service takes about 20 minutes. You cannot save your progress, so please take a look at the application form in full before applying. We recommend you prepare content before making the application.
To make the application, you will need:
- Basic administrative information on the project (funding scheme, etc.)
- Information about the project objectives and those related to standardisation
- Details on why you are making the application and the goals you would like to achieve with the support of the booster services.
To check the status of your application, log in to the HSbooster.eu website and go to sop.hsbooster.eu, where you can track progress on your submission.