（May 31, 2016）
1. Summary
CONCERT-Japan began in January 2011 as an international ERA-NET project funded by the European Commission Framework Programme for Research and Technology Development (FP7). The project aimed to further develop existing cooperation between European countries and Japan by promoting and enabling effective collaboration in science, technology and innovation research. Among other collaborative activities, to date, two CONCERT-Japan joint funding calls have been successfully executed. Although the ERA-NET funding concluded in December 2014, the participating organizations expressed a desire to sustainably continue their highly effective cooperation by means of further collaborative activities such as joint funding calls. Therefore, the European Interest Group for Japan (EIG) was established in December 2014 as a flexible platform for communication among STI agencies in European countries and Japan that are interested in cooperating together. The collaboration that began in the FP7 project is now continuing independently of EU support, as an activity of the European Interest Group, hence the name "EIG CONCERT-Japan".
A total of 13 projects were funded in the framework of ERA-NET CONCERT-Japan - 9 in the Pilot Joint Call in the two thematic areas of"Resilience against Disasters"and "Efficient Energy Storage and Distribution"and 4 projects received funding in the second call in the field "Photonic Manufacturing". The current call is open for applications in the field of "Food Crops and Biomass Production Technologies".
The following 5 research funding agencies, representing 4 European countries and Japan, are participating in this call:
| Japan | 科学技術振興機構 (JST) |
| France | The National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) |
| Germany | The Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) |
| Spain | Region of Lombardy |
| Turkey | Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TüBITAK) |
2. Period of the Call for Proposals
Tuesday 31th May 2016 until Wednesday 27th July 2016, 20:00 (Japan time)
3. Application Information
All call documents, application forms and guidance can be downloaded from the PT-Outline website, which also serves as the online submission portal:
https://secure.pt-dlr.de/ptoutline/app/users/login/EIG_JC1JAPAN
Proposals should be jointly drafted by your team and jointly submitted electronically via the PT-Outline portal. Researchers from Japan do not need to submit a separate application form to JST, but they will have to register their application on the Cross Ministerial R&D Management System (e-Rad).
For further application instructions and guidance, please refer to the following information (available only in Japanese):
4. Details of Support
Research networking and exchange projects selected for funding in this call will receive support for a period of 3 years totaling no more than approximately 18,000,000 JPY. Full details of support can be found in the Japanese guidance information above.
5. Enquiries
Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)
Department of International Affairs
Mr. Dai MINOWA, Ms. Izumi TSUNE, and Mr. Michael Vogelsanger
TEL： +81-3-52147375 FAX：+81-3-5214-7379
E-mail: concert(at)jst.go.jp
(replace (at) by @ before sending.)