Promoting European Digital Content on the Global Networks

The eContent programme supports the increased availability, use and distribution of European digital content. It aims at improving access for all to high-quality digital content on the global networks, in a multiplicity of languages.

The 3rd call for proposals for the eContent programme was launched on 20 December 2002 with an indicative budget of € 29 million. The call incorporates a fixed deadline that closed on 21 March 2003, and a continuous submission scheme that closes on 28 May 2004.

Visit our call pages for more details of the multilingual and multicultural content production action line. The current workprogramme covers the programme implementation measures for the period December 2002 until 17 January 2005, where the focus of activity is on:

• Improving access to and expanding use of public sector information (AL1)
• Enhancing content production in a multilingual and multicultural environment (AL2).

HLTCentral focuses on AL2, which aims to ease access to, and ensure a wider availability of, high quality networked content across markets and communities, by encouraging co-operation between the European content and language industries.

No European enterprise has immediate access to a market of 370 million customers who speak the same language or share the same consumer habits, and yet companies are driven by the Internet to outgrow their national market and start exporting.

For many types of products, an effective multilingual and multicultural strategy can make the difference between global success or failure. In addition, a more culturally and linguistically diverse Internet will provide broader access to the Information Society for many citizens who might otherwise be excluded.

The enlargement process of the European Union also poses additional demands for targeted customisation efforts.

The programme aims at co-financing projects that are:

• high risk - high reward,
• cross-sectoral and trans-national,
• scalable and capable of acting as multipliers,
• user orientated, and,
• capable of tackling barriers that prevent, at European level, the establishment and functioning of the single market in the areas they address.

Projects will use existing state-of-the-art technical solutions, and be geared towards business and socio-economic – as opposed to purely technological – innovation. Projects innovation will be judged on their ability to bundle, repurpose and use digital content. Research projects, offline multimedia applications as well as the digitisation of large quantities of material are not supported.

The integration of elements from the different action lines (e.g. public sector information projects that have a strong multilingual component) in a project proposal is an asset. The projects will be based upon multi-party, multi-nation partnerships.

A minimum of two independent partners from two participating countries is necessary to make a consortium eligible. Single-country or single-contractor actions are eligible only in the case of accompanying measures.

The results of the 2nd call for proposals, including the funding details for the total number of project proposals by action line, the selected projects, and a detailed statistical breakdown by country are available from the Cordis eContent pages.