Euroalert makes up a very special services package for Europe Direct info points

Despite being in Agust it may seem that everybody is on holidays or just coming back from them, activity never stops.

A few weeks ago Euroalert published in its website the Call for proposals to select the host structures of the Europe Direct information centres for the period 2013-2017. These centres are without any doubt key players in the task of bringing the EU closer to citizens and providing information about the EU which is directly related to practical aspects of everyday life.

As you will certainly know, in addition to providing services that allow to track information with customized EU Newsletters or tender alerting services, Euroalert also provides a range of services that enable organizations of all types to disseminate EU contents tailored to the interests of their users. Especially considering the needs of the Europe Direct centres, we have put together a service package to help Europe Directs to disseminate News and European grants in an easy and automatic way.

The Euroalert package for Europe Directs includes the One Web Full Content widgets to display EU News and Grants which are very easy to implement and once installed are automatically updated with no need for further management. The contents can be adapted to any web layout, filtered by area and displayed in the best way for users. They can also be shared social media completing the on-line communications activities.

If you belong to a Europe Direct centre or to an institution willing to take part in the call to host a centre in the coming years, you can download here the brochure of the Euroalert package for Europe Direct and check some Euroalert experiences with Europe Direct centres in our portfolio. The package is especially designed to give the best results at minimum cost.

To know more about the Euroalert special package for Europe Direct you can call us at +32 2 318 03 01 or reach through any of these contacts. And, of course... all Euroalert Team wishes you many luck with your proposals!

Euroalert brings you the latest European funding opportunities

The European Union regularly publishes grants through its institutions, bodies and agencies addressed to all audiences and stakeholders such as NGOs, SMEs, universities or government agencies. You only need to find them... on time!

Euroalert makes easy this task by publishing grants, i.e., the calls for proposals to apply for funding opportunities that count with European funds, and offers a personalized service to filter to get only what you are looking for. We can already say that you will find gathered in Euroalert these grants in all topics before than anywhere else.

The task may seem simple, but it is not. Not all EU grants are published in the Official Journal of the EU (OJEU). Nor all the information is published in more than one language, even the most basic information. For free, Euroalert provides grants that are published in the OJEU and whose most basic information is usually published in all 23 official EU languages. You can directly access to the latest grants published in OJEU through the Euroalert's calls for proposals website, to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter or to install the free widget onto websites and blogs, all for free and without further obligation.

But as we said, not all EU grants are published in the OJEU. Euroalert customizes the search by offering even more, both in number of grants by topic and in ways to access information that may interest you the most. An example of a grant which has not been published in OJEU, which is by the way very interesting nowadays, is "Erasmus for young entrepreneurs". The European Commission through its Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme annually publishes this grant that can help many entrepreneurs. Euroalert provides key information relating to this call in English. To keep track of this opportunity and many others not published in the OJEU, you can try for ten days, with no-obligation, the Customized Newsletter on EU information. This newsletter sends you directly to your e-mail only the most relevant information and by applying the delivery options, only when you need it.

Of course, Euroalert also proposes to provide this service in the form of “payment widget”, so you can use more advanced content as already do many institutions and companies. You can customize it to your needs and those of your users and customers in order to allow them to get information on grant opportunities in the most useful way possible. If you want to learn more about this service and the ones referred above, or any other offered by Euroalert, you can call +32 2 318 03 01 or use any of these forms of contact. As you see, Euroalert makes easier to find the funding opportunities that best fit your needs.

The EU policies and EU funding, described in Euroalert

As all those who follow us already know, Euroalert.net is a primary source for keeping abreast of developments in EU funding regarding to both calls for proposals and European programmes, as we publish daily all information concerning the policies adopted by the EU in our EU Funding section.

To finance these policies, the Union relies on EU Programmes and Initiatives that are later developed in the form of calls for proposals. Euroalert has been maintaining and publishing for more than ten years a comprehensive database in which you can find over 400 European Programmes and Initiatives published since 1972 and over 1,500 calls for proposals. In addition, we are continually updating the quality of such contents.

Well, besides putting these tools for searching funding opportunities at your disposal, in Euroalert we want to improve our section of EU funding and so we have published new pages on which we explain in detail the ins and outs of EU funding: where it comes from, how it is managed, to which areas it is addressed...

• On the one hand EU funding sources explains where the EU obtains the necessary funding to develop its policies, what it does spends these funds on, and how it develops its budget.
• In addition, we dedicate a space to programmes and initiatives that fund the policies of the European Union, and to explain it, you can find four groups of programmes: instruments of cohesion and regional development, instruments of common agricultural and fisheries policy instruments, cross-border cooperation programmes, transnational and interregional and other instruments or policies.
• Finally, the section Calls for proposals describes how these funding opportunities generated for the development and implementation of the various community policies are disseminated.
  
  

Moreover, if you want to know which Euroalert category covers a singular policy of the EU, or the policies covered by each category, you can consult the table that we have developed and which is also available along with a description of EU policies, in the same Euroalert EU Funding section.

Thus, Euroalert keeps on moving its mission of becoming an authority on electronic information about the EU, joining in a single source all the relevant information on EU funding. Soon, we will announce a major step in this line that we are preparing for the whole Euroalert community.

Euroalert does not go on holidays!

As you can see, despite August has arrived and the tendency is often to close for vacations and go to the beach, it seems that this year we will have to go on holiday with the homework that the European Commission has given us. On July 30th the European Commission published several of calls for proposals under the Seventh Framework Program (FP7) in the Official Journal of the European Union ... but not one or two, or even five... a total of ... fifty one!

The Seventh Framework Program for Research and Technological Development (VII FP) is one of our priorities when selecting contents for Euroalert.net. Indeed, as you know, Euroalert.net is working on a proposal to participate in one of the calls that were released on July 30.

So, as always, from Euroalert.net have made the effort to put at your disposal all the calls from FP7 at the same time they are published in the OJEU so you can prepare project proposals either from the beach, mountain or pool.

Because it's August, yes. And everything is closed. But the information is not going on holiday, so we keep putting at your disposal the most current news of the European Union, all the calls for proposals and programmes as well as public procurement opportunities on Euroalert.net website and through Euroalert information widgets of all our subscribers.

You know, enjoy as much as possible this month! But start preparing your projects to send them to the European Commission ... :)

Crisis? What crisis?

Many of the contents Euroalert.net provides with to all our users and subscribers have lately been focused on the same burning issue, which is in fact one of the main concerns European citizens have expressed to their institutions: economic crisis. And the truth is that crisis is actually the talk of the town: it is in all newspapers front cover, opening all TV news and, of course, a new very common topic for chitchat...

In Euroalert.net we know crisis is there, that it is really serious and is probably going to be one of the historic events our grand-children will study at school. However, we would not like that a newcomer in conversations and news, makes anybody do without something that has already become an essential tool for our subscriber's work: Euroalert.net information widgets.

We all agree that information has become an essential item, at it is not a luxury thing one might do without in hard times. For that reason, Euroalert.net will not change tariffs for widgets this year, therefore maintaining the same pricing lists as for year 2008.

From Euroalert.net we aim not only to provide contents, but also solutions and tools to get out of the economic turn-down. Public procurement, as well as being one more source of wealth and employment for countries, is also a secure and reliable opportunity for businesses. EU Programmes boost many different areas such as research, training, culture or business support, and there are constantly calls for proposals which may be of great help in such fields. Euroalert.net offers them every day.

All these essential resources will keep on being available for everybody browsing our web to be informed about the European Union, as well as through Euroalert.net free widgets. And for all those wishing to enjoy a service adapted to their own needs, we will continue to provide Euroalert.net personalised widgets in the same conditions as we did last year.

So, quoting Vinton Cerf, one of the “fathers” of the Internet who happened to be with our friends from CTIC at the end of April: there are still people who “take a great deal of pleasure in providing information to others who can use it”... We like that!

Public Sector Opportunities to tackle the crisis (I)

Over the last weeks, or even months, we have been waking up with worse and worse news about the global financial situation and the consequences of the economic turmoil. Rescue measures for some major financials institutions, emergency meetings at the highest EU level, attempts to reassure European savings, ..., are at the top of last days news. In such a situation, one can't help but rush every morning to read the news at Euroalert.net, to check whether the storm calmed down, or if we should still be worrying about any new financial disaster.

In such circumstances it seems that a new scenario has been installed, to which we should better be familiar as soon as possible... So, the time has come to take action and apply imaginative solutions, such as turning to Public Sector and find ways to get the most of all the opportunities it is offering to us.

How many times have you realized, once it was too late, that you could have submitted a proposal for a European project? This happens too often ... Or even worse, what happens when one is not aware of the opportunities he's missing to finance projects, just because he doesn't even know about them?! That's too bad...

Don't let this happen to you again ... in Euroalert.net you will find updated information about the calls for proposals published in the OJEU. Also, if you have a website or intranet in which you could publish those informations (i.e., if you are a sectoral organization, a public institution or if you have a company intranet), you can include those Calls for EU Projects among your contents using our Calls widget. Thus, your users will not pass by potential opportunities to get public funding.

These widgets will help you to display in your web sites updated and timely information about the Calls for Proposals to finance projects, and your users will have easy access to all the details concerning them: deadlines and submission procedures, funded actions, budget .... and no need for you to track the Official Journal.

In our last post we already spoke about the new 2008 CPV Codes which apply to EU Calls for Tenders. Those are also good opportunities offered by public procurement on services, supplies or even for the execution of construction works; but this is something we will talk about in a future post.

See... crisis times can also be an opportunity to build up new skills, such as making good use of all the funding instruments the EU is offering us.

Site plans of the Eropean Commission Directorates-General Offices

What we are bringing to you today, is one more small detail that we have included in the features of Euroalert.net. One of the informations we provide you in the files of the Calls for Proposals and EU Programmes in Euroalert.net are the data to locate the Directorate or Directorates General of the European Commission that are responsible for the management of financial opportunities and where, for instance, you could apply for further informations or ask for valuable indications or clarifications.

Although the good-old-days when you had to go to Brussels, with the whole file in your brief-case to submit your project or present your application in the appropriate desk, are nowadays completely over, having clear informations about where we can obtain further details is something that can be very useful at some point. Getting lost in Brussels while you are looking for an address is an experience that we would like to save you..., and for that purpose we have included a little help: the georeferenced situation on Google Maps, or the cyber-version of the trail of breadcrumbs in fairy tales :)

With this new feature, when you will browse the information about an EU Programme or Call for Proposal, and want to know the exact situation of the DG responsible for it, you will only have to click on the link to the address and you will have the site plan. That's it! Just as simple as that, with no more search, you will have all the information from the beginning!

All those new features we are introducing step by step, are intended to make Euroalert.net an ever better site for you, providing you with more complete and useful contents. We will keep on improving!

Free EU Calls for Proposals Widget for your website

We are posting today on something we wanted to share with the international Euroalert.net community for quite some time. As some of you already know, we have been working on a widget that allows you to display updated EU Calls for Proposals automatically on your Website for free. You can see the first example of this kind, in the sidebar of this blog, where you will find the last 10 Calls for Proposals published in the Official Journal of the EU.

Some of you are already in “the know” either via email conversations we have had or through your direct involvement with the dozens of tests we have made into the last few months. During this precious time, we have been dealing with all the little things that appear when you think everything is fixed and, of course, improving all the aspects of the project to release a reliable service even in beta. A special thanks to all those that collaborated with us and those who we asked for help because without you, nothing that we have achieved would have been possible.


To get a widget for your website all you need to do is register with Condelway, the platform through which Euroalert.net distributes all of its contents. Once you have signed up, you can manage your subscriptions through the Condelway dashboard. The wizard will help you to customize the code for your website or blog if you do not have programming skills. For advanced users the complete API documentation is published in the Euroalert.net website as well as some examples on how this widget has been installed by some other Euroalert subscribers.

We are continually developing new features for our services to extend and improve them. As we always do, we will keep you informed about any new version we may release, announcing it in this blog and updating all the documentation.

Hot off the press are our EU News widget and the EU Programmes and Initiatives widget, which have been developed so that you can provide information from these areas to your users on your website! We will be posting on it very soon.

Free newsletter from Euroalert.net: now European information every week

One of the oldest services that Euroalert.net has offered to its users is the free European Union newsletter which has been sent by email in Spanish since 2000. This morning we have sent all our subscribers the last fortnightly edition. In response to the requests of great number of you whom with good reason wanted a more up to date service, we now send our newsletter out weekly.

The format of the newsletter has not changed, you will receive in your mail boxes a selection of the most relevant contents about the European Union every week free as always. (Current news, Calls for Proposals, programmes and initiatives from the European Union, etc.)

To be more precise, we will send you the Euroalert.net newsletter every Wednesday at 10.30 am. With this change, we hope the newsletter will contain the most up to date information on everything that is coming out of the European Union whether it be the current news, a calls for proposals or a new initiative.

The change from fortnightly newsletter will be automatic, this is to say that those already subscribed, will continue to receive on a weekly basis. If it is the case, and we hope for not many of you, that the new newsletter is inadequate for your needs, you are able to cancel subscription yourselves.

As always we will keep you informed through this blog of any improvements that we include or of any features that become new to the international version of Euroalert.net.