DEP Call 10: Accelerating Best Use of Technologies (DIGITAL-2026-BESTUSE-10)

DEP Call 10: Accelerating Best Use of Technologies (DIGITAL-2026-BESTUSE-10)

Historical reference: the call is closed

HaDEA’s DEP Call 10: Accelerating Best Use of Technologies, reference DIGITAL-2026-BESTUSE-10, is a closed call under the Digital Europe Programme. HaDEA’s official call page records its status as closed and gives a single-stage submission deadline of 1 October 2026 at 17:00 CEST (Brussels time). The official call fiche says proposals had to be submitted before that deadline. This page is therefore an archive of the completed call, not an invitation to submit now. The official call page and documents reviewed for this update announce no replacement or next round.

The call was managed by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). It brought together two distinct topics under one reference: deployment of European Health Data Space capabilities, and comprehensive geographical coverage of the Network of Safer Internet Centres. Each application had to address one topic only. An applicant wishing to apply under both topics had to submit a separate proposal under each; one proposal could not combine them as a single track.

These facts come from the current HaDEA call listing and the call fiche linked through official EU funding material. The word “estimated” matters: the fiche says that the agency could decide not to award all available funds or to redistribute funds between priorities, depending on proposals and evaluation results. The headline allocation was not a promise that every euro would be awarded.

The two funded topic areas

DIGITAL-2026-BESTUSE-10-EHDS

The first topic was titled “Building capacity to deploy the EEHRxF and digital health services and systems to support the rights of citizens and reuse of health data under EHDS.” Its estimated budget was €14.4 million. It addressed practical implementation of the European Health Data Space (EHDS), including adoption of the European Electronic Health Record Exchange Format (EEHRxF), digital health services that support people’s rights over their health records, and preparation of health data for permitted secondary use.

The call fiche organised the EHDS work around three strands. The first concerned public authorities and healthcare providers: guidance, deployment support, staff capacity building, and services that allow people to exercise EHDS rights and support the EEHRxF. It also contemplated cascade funding to support deployment activities by public authorities and healthcare providers. The second strand concerned health data holders preparing data for secondary use. It included tools and support for dataset descriptions, data quality and utility labels, catalogue integration, and the organisational and technical arrangements required for lawful availability of data. The third strand concerned training service providers, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, so they could help public authorities, providers, and data holders implement EHDS requirements.

The call was consequently broader than a software development grant. Its stated outcomes included communities that share practice, practical guidance, deployment and capacity building, a toolbox for data holders, dataset descriptions and labels, and a training framework for service providers. The fiche expected projects to cover a large number of Member States and eligible countries and to support all priority data categories under EHDS. Proposals needed to explain how work fit these specified strands and how the planned outputs would help organisations put interoperable services and data practices into use.

DIGITAL-2026-BESTUSE-10-NETWORKSICs

The second topic was titled “Ensuring comprehensive geographical coverage of the Network of Safer Internet Centres (SICs).” Its estimated budget was €10 million. The stated objective was to contribute to children’s protection and empowerment online by ensuring comprehensive geographical coverage of national Safer Internet Centres across the EU.

The fiche describes the services expected from this network: online safety information, educational resources, public-awareness tools, and counselling and reporting services through dedicated helplines and hotlines. Its audiences include children and young people, parents and carers, teachers and educators, and other professionals who work with children. The policy context includes the Better Internet for Kids strategy and work on issues such as cyberbullying, age verification and assurance, children’s mental health and wellbeing, and relevant Digital Services Act obligations.

This topic was a network-coverage and service-delivery action, not a general-purpose technology competition. A proposal needed to fit the call’s specified Safer Internet Centre activity and explain how the planned work contributed to comprehensive national coverage. Applicants considering this topic also needed to use its dedicated topic page and fiche conditions rather than assuming that requirements for the EHDS topic applied to it.

Eligibility recorded in the call fiche

The official fiche stated that beneficiaries and affiliated entities had to be public or private legal entities established in an eligible country. Eligible locations included EU Member States, including overseas countries and territories, and non-EU countries listed in the European Economic Area or associated to the Digital Europe Programme. The exact associated-country list was maintained separately, so location alone was not enough to establish eligibility.

The fiche required beneficiaries and affiliated entities to register in the Participant Register before submitting and to undergo validation by the Central Validation Service. Applicants had to provide documents demonstrating legal status and origin. It also set out specific exclusions and cases: natural persons were generally ineligible, with the stated exception for self-employed sole traders whose business has no separate legal personality; international organisations were generally ineligible except for the defined organisations of European interest. Other participation conditions and restrictions are set out in the fiche and applicable Digital Europe rules.

Consortium rules differed by topic. An EHDS proposal required at least five independent applicants serving as beneficiaries from five different eligible countries; affiliated entities did not count toward that minimum. For NETWORKSICs, the call fiche marked the consortium-composition condition as not applicable. That wording does not remove the requirement to check all other eligibility and role rules in the full call documents.

Applicants also had to demonstrate sufficient financial and operational capacity, satisfy exclusion requirements, and comply with the call’s ethics and security provisions. The fiche notes that ethics review would apply and that additional ethics conditions could become grant obligations. Projects involving EU classified information could face security scrutiny and specific handling requirements. These are material conditions, not optional quality suggestions.

How submission worked for this cycle

Applications were submitted electronically through the Funding & Tenders Portal’s Electronic Submission System, reached from the relevant topic page. Paper proposals were not accepted. Applicants had to use the forms provided inside the submission system; documents visible on the topic page were informational and did not replace the submission templates.

The required application package included Part A, completed online with administrative information about the coordinator, beneficiaries and affiliated entities, as well as the summary budget. It also included Part B, the technical project description, downloaded from the submission system, completed and uploaded there. Mandatory annexes and supporting documents also had to be included. The fiche specifically lists the detailed budget table or calculator, core-team CVs, and prior-year activity reports as not applicable for this call. A list of key previous projects from the previous four years was required in Part B for the EHDS topic, with particular attention to projects involving management of financial support to third parties.

At submission, the coordinator had to confirm authority to act for all applicants and certify that the application was correct and complete and that participants met applicable conditions. Each beneficiary and affiliated entity would have to confirm compliance again through a declaration of honour before grant signature. The technical description in Part B was limited to 70 pages; evaluators would not consider additional pages. The documents had to be readable, accessible, and printable. Additional records could later be requested for legal-entity validation, financial-capacity checks, or bank-account validation.

The published timetable listed evaluation from October through December 2026, information on evaluation results in January 2027, and grant-agreement signature in June 2027. Those are the timetable dates stated in the call fiche; they do not reopen the submission window. The submission deadline remains the historical date shown above.

Reading the archive usefully

For a team reviewing this call after closure, the most useful first step is to identify which of its two problems matches the project. EHDS planning should be checked against the three work strands, the five-country consortium minimum, and the deliverables on citizens’ rights, EEHRxF deployment, secondary-use preparation, and provider training. Safer Internet Centre planning should be checked against national network coverage and the described information, education, awareness, counselling, and reporting services. Similar language about “digital transformation” does not make the topics interchangeable.

The call fiche is also useful as a record of what a future proposal in this policy area might have needed to address, but its requirements should not be treated as proof that a later call will repeat them. A subsequent programme cycle could alter budgets, beneficiaries, consortium minimums, forms, deadlines, or priorities. No next round is announced on the official HaDEA call page reviewed for this entry. Anyone monitoring the programme should rely on a newly published HaDEA notice and its linked Funding & Tenders topic documents before planning an application.

For archival verification, consult the official HaDEA call page and the official call fiche. The HaDEA listing is the current status reference; the fiche preserves the detailed objectives, budgets, eligibility, consortium, document, and timetable rules that applied to this cycle.