European Assistance for Innovation Procurement

The European Assistance for Innovation Procurement-initiative is an initiative from the European Commission (DG Connect) that aims to provide promotion, training and local assistance to public procurers and policy makers that are interested to implement innovation procurements of ICT based solutions across the EU Member States.

The initiative European Assistance for Innovation Procurement (EAFIP) started beginning of 2015.

During 2015 - 2018 Corvers and Stella joined forces in order to realise the following key components of the initiative:

• During the course of the project, 12 events in different EU countries provided info and training on innovation procurement.
• A Toolkit was developed to assist policy makers, public procurers and legal services in how to support, design and implement innovation procurements (PCP and PPI procurement procedures). The three modules of the Toolkit are downloadable from the EAFIP-website. 
• Training (based on the Toolkit) on why and how to implement PCP and PPI has been given through several workshops throughout Europe. A helpdesk posts replies to FAQs online.
• Local assistance focused on public procurers that wanted to start a PCP or PPI procurement for ICT based solutions at national level. It included legal assistance in the start-up and implementation phase of a PCP or PPI. Six new PCP and six new PPI procurements were kick-started.

From 2019 onward - Corvers main contractor for EAFIP

From 2019 onward, Corvers is main contractor for the EAFIP-initiative. During 2019-2020 another 9 new innovation procurements of ICT based solutions were selected to benefit from technical and/or legal local assistance free of charge. 

The European Assistance for Innovation Procurement initiative (www.eafip.eu) seeks to receive applications of public procurers from all EU Member States to support the implementation of Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) and Procurement of Innovative Solution (PPI). These may include Green deal projects; projects on Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity; and projects under national digital/ICT strategies. EAFIP also welcomes project applications on ICT solutions aimed to tackle COVID-19 or similar crises through innovation procurement.

During 2021-2022 new projects that aim to procure innovative ICT-based solutions get the opportunity to apply for free assistance. New calls to apply for free assistance will be published every three months. 

Visit the EAFIP website for more information on the eafip initiative and register for the newsletter to stay up to date with the next steps of the initiative.