Country: European Commission

Tobacco use is extremely harmful to health and its illicit trade causes billions in tax revenue losses each year. The EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) provides for the establishment of a tracking and tracing system that enables the authorities to follow the movements of every packet of the 26 billion or more sold or produced in the EU, along every step of the supply chain, via real-time reporting by industry. The system is a tool for authorities in implementing their tobacco control policy.

The European Commission is calling for startups and SMEs with technologies and innovations that could help in treating, testing, monitoring or other aspects of the Coronavirus outbreak to apply urgently to the next round of funding from the European Innovation Council. With a budget of €164m, this call is “bottom up”, meaning there are no predefined thematic priorities and applicants with Coronavirus relevant innovations will be evaluated in the same way as other applicants. Nevertheless,…

The EU is using a Call for Proposals to for SMEs to source innovative solutions from the private sector that can be scaled up to handle Corona Virus issues. This is a EUR164 million fund, designated as “Bottom Up”, meaning it has “no predefined thematic priorities”, thus allowing for coronavirus-relevant innovations to be submitted and fast-tracked.