Statistics on the proposals submitted to the 2012 Research for the Benefit of SMEs call, part of the FP7 Capacities programme have been made available by the European Commission. The statistics show that overall number of proposals rose in comparison with the previous year's calls.

For the "Research for the Benefit of SMEs" strand, 832 eligible proposals were submitted (compared to 759 submitted for the 2011 call and 660 for the 2010 call). 157 eligible proposals, exactly the same number as in the 2011 call, were submitted for the "Research for the Benefit of SME Associations" strand. For the "Demonstration Action" strand, 36 eligible proposals were submitted (compared to 30 for the 2011 call). A total of 369 proposals scored above the applicable threshold, and the total budgetary request was 456 million Euros. The increased budget for the 2012 call (220 million Euros) means that the success rate of around 17 % for the 2011 call (which had a budget of 204 million Euros) may be maintained for the 2012 call. It is expected that the first grant agreements with successful applicants will be concluded in June 2012.

More information: http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/page/capacities?callIdentifier=FP7-SME-2012