What is this?

The Maritime Low-Emission Network  (MARLEN) is a partnership under Horizon Europe, providing support and funding for innovation projects for sustainable shipping, that fit in the agenda of the Zero Emission Waterborne Transport network (ZEWT).

MARLEN is active from 1 January 2025 until 30 June 2029. The topics of ZEWT are:

• use of sustainable alternative fuels
• electrification
• energy efficiency
• design and retrofitting
• digitalisation
• ports

The MARLEN priorities for its calls are:

• MPA 1 (Early concepts): Projects in this priority should focus on promising early concepts within the scope of ZEWT partnership and should include activities that predominantly fall within the category of industrial research.
• MPA 2 (O&O): Projects in this prioirity should focus on research and development activities according to the topics of the ZEWT partnership as well and should be predominantly experimental development. In general, projects should include industrial partners with one as the coordinator. The participation of SMEs is strongly encouraged and they benefit from higher funding rates. Research or other partners are optional but their participation is also encouraged.
• MPA 3 (End user involvement): Projects in this priority should focus on studies, demonstration and implementation of fuels and technologies on routes that stimulate early adoption of promising long-term solutions to reach zero emissions in shipping. Project consortium should include ports and shipping operators on relevant routes on which the solutions can be implemented. Consortia should also bring together a team with the necessary expertise and experience to successfully deliver the project objectives.

Consortium composition

The MARLEN network joins 13 funding actors from 10 countries.

A MARLEN project consortium consists of minimum 2 independent partners from 2 different participating countries. The project proposals must involve industry partners. Depending on the national funding rules, not all types of en-tities are eligible in all countries/regions. Before submission,  the funding parties in every country/region involved should be contacted.

What funding programmes are involved?

VLAIO participates with its programmes for research projects and development projects.

The submitted projects should comply with the eligibility requirements of these programmes.

What is the process?

Evaluation is a 2-step process. When participating in a call, the project coördinator of the international MARLEN project submits a pre-proposal by the set deadline. In parallel, the Flemish participant, requesting funding from VLAIO, submits a project proposal to VLAIO. After eligibility check by the funding organisations involved and MARLEN, the eligible proposals are invited to submit a full proposal, for subsequent evaluation by MARLEN.

What is the target group?

MARLEN’s target group is broad and is generally aimed at companies and research organisations looking for international cooperation in R&D. Flemish participants requesting funding from VLAIO should comply with the requirements of the funding programmes involved (industrial research and experimental development). This means that the applicants are companies with an active branch in Flanders, that has the mains to exploit the results sufficiently in Flanders as well.

More information?

marlen.ptj.de 

Documents for application:

• Templates for submission to MARLEN will be made available on marlen.ptj.de
• For submission to VLAIO, you need to follow the procedure and documents from the chosen funding programme: research project or development project. Don’t forget to tick the box “international project” and select “MARLEN” as Euronetwork!

Are you considering to submit a project to MARLEN? it is required to contact VLAIO before submission (jozef.ghijselen@vlaio.be,  +32 2 432 42 40) for further explanations and/or an exploratory discussion.