JST has approved funding for 5 multilateral joint research projects (Attachment 1) under the theme of “Smart Water Management for Sustainable Society,” in collaboration with 9 funding agencies from 8 European countries (Attachment 2) within the EIG CONCERT-Japan^*1 framework under SICORP^*2.

CONCERT-Japan started as an international cooperation initiative within the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7). Since 2015 it has continued under the newly named European Interest Group (EIG) CONCERT-Japan, which consists of 13 partner funding agencies representing 12 countries (Attachment 3), and aims to advance science and technology cooperation between Europe and Japan via network building as well as learning and information exchange related to science and technology policy and in broader terms.

In 2019, the 6^th EIG CONCERT-Japan joint call was opened from April 15 to June 14 under the theme of “Smart Water Management for Sustainable Society,” to which a total of 17 proposals were submitted. Following an in-depth evaluation process by a scientific committee (Attachment 4) and subsequent discussion among the participating funding agencies, it was decided that JST will fund the 5 projects, together with its European partner funding agencies. The projects are planned to be funded for a period of 3 years, totalling up to 18 million JPY in funding for each Japanese research team.