On 6 November the Commission launched the second call for proposals of the Connecting Europe Facility, with more than €7.6 billion of investment to finance transport projects - €6.5 billion of which is earmarked for cohesion countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia).

One part of the General Call is dedicated to urban nodes of the core Trans-European Transport network with a €50 million budget; and one part of the Cohesion Call is also dedicated to those nodes also with a €50 million budget, but a higher co-financing rate of up to 85%.

Support will be granted on a competitive basis in the form of EU co-financing, following a thorough evaluation and selection process. Applicants have until 16 February 2016 to submit their proposals. The outcome of the calls will be published by summer 2016.

Under the first call launched in 2014 and awarded earlier this year, seven urban nodes projects received co-financing. The involved cities are Birmingham, Frankfurt, London, Norrkoping, Malmo, Copenhagen, Paris and Lyon.

Applicants will mostly be Member States or public or private undertakings. The Commission is assisted by the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) for the evaluation and selection of project proposals and for the overall technical and financial monitoring of project implementation. The Member States themselves remain responsible for monitoring the implementation of the projects.

The call texts do not stipulate ceilings for a maximum amount of funding which can be requested per proposal. Applicants are strongly encouraged to submit applications for actions with the total requested EU contribution for the eligible costs of no less than €500,000 for studies and €1,000,000 for works. Where possible, related actions should be grouped and submitted as one proposal.

Applicants whose proposals were not selected for funding under the first call may apply again with the same proposal, taking account of the lessons-learned in the evaluation as appropriate, or with a new proposal.

For more information on the calls visit ec.europa.eu/inea or download the objectives of the work programme [opens pdf]. The Commission will also host an information day on the CEF calls in late November.