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Policy Brief: STEP (in Digital Europe)

Published on | 9 months ago

Programmes Digital Europe

The Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) is an initiative designed to enhance the EU's
industrial competitiveness and reinforce European sovereignty by focusing on the development and
manufacturing of critical technologies. STEP aims to bolster investments within three strategic sectors:

  • Digital technologies and deep technology innovation,
  • Clean and resource efficient technologies,
  • Biotechnologies.

STEP also supports projects growing the skills necessary to develop those critical technologies. STEP
introduces a new STEP Seal – an EU label for high quality projects granting STEP projects visibility and
facilitating their access to other possible sources of funding.

Knowledge of underlying EU policies and legislations is a key element in Digital Europe proposals as they play an important role in the “relevance” evaluation criterion. This Policy Briefing is one of several briefings prepared by DEP4ALL, the NCP Network for the Digital Europe programme, to support applicants with summaries of relevant EU initiatives.

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Testimonial

Miricle - Mine Risk Clearance for Europe

The Miricle project, ‘Mine Risk Clearance for Europe’, obtained funding under the European Defence Industrial Development programme call ‘Underwater control contributing to resilience at sea’. The main objective of the project was to achieve a European and sovereign capacity in future mine warfare and create a path for the next generation ‘made in Europe’ countermeasure solutions. In order to realise this objective, Miricle addressed various stages: studies, design, prototyping and testing. These stages inter alia included the successful testing of an XL Unmanned Underwater Vehicle, a protototyped mine disposal system and multiple innovative systems to detect buried mines. Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), was one of the five Belgian partners in the consortium. Within the project, VLIZ was able to forward its research on the acoustic imaging of the seabed to spatially map and visualize buried structures and objects - in this case buried mines - in the highest possible detail. VLIZ also led the work on ‘Port and Offshore Testing’, building on the expertise of the institute in the field of marine operations and technology.