ADR Vest (West Regional Development Agency) has launched the public consultation for the STEP call guide, dedicated to strategic technologies for Europe. The budget is approximately 22 million euros, and the deadline for submitting project sheets has been extended until August 20, 2026.
STEP, meaning the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform, is the new transversal priority of the European Union, introduced to address the technological gap with the United States and China. In Romania, this theme has generated dedicated calls in several Regional Programs and the Health Program.
The call in the West Region, part of Priority 2 Smart Region, has a budget of approximately 22 million euros. The press has cited grants between 5 and 20 million euros per project, but these values were not officially confirmed in the guide at the time of writing.
What differentiates this call from others is the two-stage procedure. Instead of requiring a full file from the beginning, ADR Vest has organized a pre-selection stage through project sheets—a simplified document where the applicant describes their intention. Only those selected proceed to the full application file.
It is an approach that significantly reduces unnecessary effort. In classic calls, hundreds of companies invest months of work and tens of thousands of EUR in consulting for files that are rejected on eligibility grounds. Pre-selection solves this problem in a few weeks.
Eligible entities include SMEs, large enterprises, and partnerships with research-development organizations, with a deep-tech and biotechnology profile. The deadline for project sheets was extended until August 20, 2026, meaning the call was still open in mid-August.
The pre-selection mechanism through project sheets is worth watching as a precedent. If the results are good, the model is likely to be extended to other regional calls, which would significantly reduce consulting costs unnecessarily borne by companies that would not have qualified anyway. Currently, a company can spend between 10,000 and 30,000 EUR on a file rejected for eligibility reasons that could have been identified in the first week.
For companies in the West Region with a technological profile, the STEP call represents one of the few opportunities to access grants in the millions of euros without entering a European consortium. However, competition will be concentrated: the number of firms in the region capable of running a deep-tech project of this magnitude is limited, which, paradoxically, may play in favor of serious applicants.
What you need to know
- Budget: approx. 22 million EUR
- Procedure: two stages, with pre-selection via project sheets
- Eligible: SMEs, large enterprises, partnerships with research organizations, deep-tech and biotechnology profiles
- Pre-selection deadline: August 20, 2026, extended
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