IH-MIE — Hydrogen Mobility Open Call
Free to start. We confirm your fit and quote a fixed price before you commit to anything.
IH-MIE
Free IH-MIE intakeIH-MIE (Interregional Hydrogen Mobility Initiative for Europe) is an Interregional Innovation Investments project that funds SMEs moving hydrogen mobility technology from TRL 6 towards pre-commercial readiness. Selected companies run a 12-month project alongside mentoring, technical assistance and an optional investor day. What sets this call apart from most cascade funding: the grant is fully funded and asks nothing from your own balance sheet.
- Funding
- Up to €60,000 per SME as a lump sum, funded at 100% of the approved amount. There is no co-financing requirement — no cash and no in-kind contribution. Payment: 40% pre-financing within 45 days of signature, 25% after the interim review, 35% on the final balance. Personnel costs are eligible; subcontracting is capped at 30% of the budget. Teams of up to three SMEs may apply together for a maximum of €180,000.
- Who can apply
- SMEs as defined by EU Recommendation 2003/361/EC, established in an EU Member State or an EEA country. Your technology must be at TRL 6 at the time of application, with evidence for that starting level, and show a credible path towards TRL 9 within the twelve months. One proposal per applicant: if you submit more than one, only the last counts. Universities, research organisations and large companies may join as associated partners, but receive no funding and do not affect eligibility.
- Scope — read this before you assess fit
- The call funds six named challenges and nothing else: fuel cell cost and durability, refuelling infrastructure, supply chain and logistics, integration with other mobility solutions, on-board hydrogen storage, and hydrogen distribution. This is hydrogen mobility specifically, not clean technology in general. A strong sustainability profile without a hydrogen mobility component falls outside scope.
- Programme and selection
- A total of €1.8 million is available for up to 30 projects, of which at least €800,000 is reserved for SMEs established in Less Developed Regions. Projects run from 1 January to 31 December 2027, exactly twelve months, with no extension possible. Scoring above 60 out of 100 is the entry condition for the Jury Day, not a guarantee of a place: the invitation list is the top 30 ranked proposals plus any within 3 points of the cut-off, capped at 10% of all submissions. Deadline: 25 September 2026. The guide prints 17:00 CET, but the date falls inside summer time, so work to 17:00 CEST and you are safe either way.
- Points awarded on facts, not on writing
- Three sub-criteria are not assessed on quality but awarded on the facts in your application: being established in a Less Developed Region, being a female-led SME, and having a workforce that is more than half female. A fourth is awarded on an action rather than a fact: publishing a cooperative idea on the call’s b2match matchmaking platform is worth 2 points, and publishing nothing is worth 0. Where these apply to you they count towards your score without any writing on our part — worth knowing before you decide whether to invest the effort.
- Deadline
- 25 Sept 2026— 11 days remaining
- Max grant
- €60,000
- Official source
- https://ihmie.eu/ ↗
Is this the right call for you? 6 conditions decide it
- 01Your technology sits below TRL 6 at the time of application, or you cannot evidence that starting level. The guide treats this as a maturity bar a proposal has to clear, not as a scoring nuance, and reaching TRL 6 during the project does not qualify.
- 02Your project does not address at least one of the six named challenges: fuel cell cost and durability, refuelling infrastructure, supply chain and logistics, integration with other mobility solutions, on-board hydrogen storage, hydrogen distribution. Scope alignment is a stage 1 knock-out, checked before anyone scores your proposal.
- 03Your company does not qualify as an SME under EU Recommendation 2003/361/EC. Universities, research organisations and large companies can join as associated partners, but they cannot be the applicant and they receive nothing.
- 04Your company is not established in an EU Member State or an EEA country.
- 05Your project cannot be delivered inside the fixed window of 1 January to 31 December 2027. The twelve months are not negotiable, no extension will be considered, and activities outside that window are not eligible.
- 06Your proposed activities are already funded, in whole or in part, by another EU programme. The prohibition sits at activity level, so having had EU funding before is not the problem; funding the same work twice is.
Not a match on one of these? Then this call is not the one, which says nothing about the next. Calls open continuously: the free Match Report tells you which call does fit, or tells you plainly that none of them do, and our weekly digest tells you when a call you can enter opens.
Do you really not have to co-finance this, unlike most cascade calls?
Correct, and the guide is explicit about it. Projects are funded at 100% of the approved lump sum, and the guide’s own FAQ answers the co-funding question with a plain No. There is no cash contribution and no in-kind personnel requirement. The condition that disqualifies most SMEs from other cascade funding simply does not exist here, which is why the eligibility question for this call is almost entirely about scope and TRL evidence instead.
You are at TRL 5 now but will reach TRL 6 by the deadline. Is that enough?
No. Your technology has to be at TRL 6 already at the moment you apply, demonstrated in a relevant, operationally representative environment, and you have to justify and evidence that declared starting level. The guide states that proposals failing to demonstrate this maturity do not meet the eligibility expectations of the call. Being at TRL 6 by project start is not the test; being there at submission is.
If you score above 60 out of 100, are you through to the Jury Day?
Not automatically. Scoring above 60 is the entry condition, but the invitation list is capped: it consists of the top 30 ranked proposals, plus any proposal within 3 points of the cut-off score, subject to a ceiling of 10% of all submissions, rounded down. In a competitive round you can clear 60 and still sit outside the invited group. Those invited give a five-minute pitch followed by questions.
Can you apply together with other SMEs, and does that change the money?
Yes. You can apply alone or as a team of up to three SMEs, with the submitting SME acting as Project Leader and main contact. Each participating SME can receive up to €60,000, so a three-SME team reaches a combined maximum of €180,000. The ceiling is per SME rather than a shared pool, so you cannot concentrate the full amount on one partner. Only one proposal per applicant is allowed, and if you submit more than one, only the last one counts.
What gets an application rejected before an expert ever reads it?
Stage 1 is an eligibility and admissibility check covering six things: SME status, establishment in an EU Member State or EEA country, alignment with the call’s scope, compliance with the funding and cost limits, compliance with the fixed twelve-month project window, and a complete, English-language submission filed on time through the official platform. Failing any single one of these rejects the proposal outright. You are told why, but there is no way back into that round.
Is 60 out of 100 the only score you have to clear?
No, and this is where proposals quietly fail. There are minimum scores per section as well: 20 for Excellence, 15 for Implementation and 15 for Impact. A proposal can total more than 60 and still be rejected because one section sits below its floor — a brilliant technology with a thin work plan is exactly the shape that trips this. The full scoring table appears in the guide only as an image, and the section minima were stated aloud at the project’s applicant info session rather than written anywhere. Excellence covers innovation and technical soundness, your TRL and development pathway, and alignment with the call. Implementation covers the work plan and milestone logic, risk management and team capacity. Impact covers economic, environmental and market impact, the territorial points, and whether your budget is coherent with the work plan.
Is the B2Match bonus only worth chasing if you actually want a partner?
No. Publishing a project idea on the IH-MIE B2Match platform is worth two points whether or not a partnership comes of it. The coordinator was asked this directly at the info session and confirmed that a single SME which publishes an idea, looks for a partner and does not find one still receives the bonus: the points reward the attempt at interregional collaboration, not the outcome. Two points on a hundred-point scale, for a form you fill in once, on a call where the cut-off is crowded — it is the cheapest score on the board and it is routinely left on the table.
Your head office is not in a Less Developed Region but you have a site that is. Do the points count?
Only if the project genuinely runs from that site. Asked this exact question at the info session, the coordinator drew a firm line: the team carrying out the project has to be legally established at the office in the Less Developed Region, and the work, the testing and the meetings have to take place there. An address in the region is not enough — you have to be able to demonstrate that the project itself lives there, and supporting evidence can be attached to the application. The points themselves are automatic: for a single SME established in an LDR, or for a team where at least half the participating SMEs are.
What counts as a deliverable, and should you put equipment in the budget?
Deliverables do not have to be documents, and the coordinator was blunt about it at the info session: they do not want reports. A demonstrator, a prototype, a set of plans, a website, a patent filing, a press or media action, a video or a dataset all qualify as verifiable evidence that a milestone was reached. Even the interim review in June 2027 is an online form rather than a report you write. On equipment, the advice was to avoid it where possible: only the depreciation attributable to the project period is eligible, and including it reliably generates queries you then have to answer. Subcontracting is capped at 30% of the project budget, and indirect costs are a flat 7% of eligible direct costs.
Verified against IHMIE_Guide_for_Applicants_VDEF.pdf (doc. ref. 101228317) — the guide carries no printed version date; the file is dated 26 June 2026. Four answers added 20-08-2026 from the project’s official applicant info session, hosted by the coordinator CTAG: the per-section score minima, the B2Match bonus for solo applicants, the Less Developed Region office test, and the guidance on deliverables and equipment. None of these are available in text anywhere — the scoring table exists in the guide only as Figure 3, an image.. Official source: https://ihmie.eu/ ↗
We verified this call line by line against its official Guide for Applicants. The absence of a co-financing requirement removes the condition most companies fail on, which makes the eligibility question almost entirely about scope and TRL evidence. The readiness intake below follows that guide question by question, so everything you fill in is directly reusable in the application itself. We come back within 2 working days on whether your work genuinely sits inside one of the six challenges.
- Impact in the evaluators' language
The most common reason strong clean-tech applications lose points on impact, and the fix.
- Why applications fail before the technology is read
Two administrative things decide a cascade application before its technical merit is weighed. Both are inside your control.
Ready for IH-MIE? Starting is free.
One structured intake, specific to this call. We confirm your fit, quote a fixed price, and only then decide together whether we write your IH-MIE application. No obligation, no sales call.
Prefer your own language? Start the intake in Dutch, French, German, Spanish or Portuguese — we assess in your language and write the application in English.
The calls worth knowing about, once a week.
Cascade calls are not published in one place. Each consortium announces on its own project website, and aggregators run weeks behind. We monitor the sources directly and send what we find, with our own reading of who it actually fits. No pitch, and one reply takes you off the list, the same day.