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Citizen facing European TV and Video News Portal for Streaming, Search and Translation of European TV and video news and political documentaries
Funding Program
Pilot Projects and Preparatory Actions (PPPAs)
Call number
PPPA-2026-CITIZEN-PLATFORM-TV
deadlines
Opening
16.04.2026
Deadline
28.05.2026 17:00
Funding rate
80%
Call budget
€ 5,500,000.00
Estimated EU contribution per project
€ 5,500,000.00
Link to the call
Link to the submission
Call content
short description
To develop, integrate and operate a pilot pan-European multilingual AI media infrastructure (a common backbone of reusable services, interfaces and interoperability specifications) that enables near-real-time ingestion, pooling, processing, search, streaming, multilingual access and cross-border discovery and distribution of professional news and public-interest information and content, including, where relevant, the reuse and contextualisation of existing material and archived content, while embedding public-interest-by-design safeguards, including transparency, provenance, non-discrimination and the ethical use of AI, promoting Europe’s linguistic and cultural diversity, supporting outreach to the sector on needs and obstacles to uptake, and ensuring inclusive participation of smaller and independent media organisations.
Call objectives
European citizens increasingly access news and current-affairs content through digital services, while key layers of audience access, discovery and distribution are often mediated by large non-European intermediaries. This creates dependencies in Europe’s information space, constrains the cross-border visibility and circulation of European journalism, and increases exposure to manipulation attempts targeting democratic debate. At the same time, Europe’s media market remains fragmented along national and linguistic lines, which limits the ability of trusted professional news and public-interest information to reach audiences across borders. This fragmentation is compounded by the fact that, beyond English, German, French and Spanish, many EU languages remain comparatively under-resourced in terms of AI tools and language technologies.
Against this backdrop, targeted public investment in a shared pan-European infrastructure is justified to address structural barriers that individual media organisations, especially smaller ones, cannot overcome alone. Such an infrastructure can provide common building blocks for near-real-time multilingual processing, cross-border discovery and reliable circulation of trusted content, while reducing technical and cost barriers. This also means addressing not only the availability of trusted content, but the channels and interfaces through which it reaches audiences, including in platform-mediated and social-media-facing environments where news consumption increasingly takes place.
Themes and priorities
1. Core pan-European infrastructure backbone and interoperability
Key aspects in scope include:
- Onboarding and requirements consolidation: onboarding of a diverse range of professional media providers across the EU and EU languages, including smaller and local actors, to identify and consolidate technical and operational requirements for a shared infrastructure, including integration needs, metadata and rights information, and workflow constraints; this can be supported through a structured coordination mechanism and targeted technical exchanges.
- Core infrastructure interfaces (input/output): implementation of interoperable, modular architecture and open APIs that enable consistent ingestion and onboarding on the input side and expose services for cross-border discovery and distribution on the output side, compatible with multiple front ends, newsroom tools and third-party services, and ensuring clear source identification.
- Testing and operational validation: testing and validation of the infrastructure under near real time news conditions, including performance, robustness, monitoring and resilience, with measurable criteria demonstrating readiness for wider uptake and scale beyond the project duration.
2. AI technologies for multilingual access, media processing and multimodal enrichment
Key aspects in scope include:
- Core multilingualisation and media processing: AI-enabled transcription (speech-to-text), translation, subtitling, and, where relevant, dubbing/voice-over, designed for near-real-time publishing constraints. Solutions may also support related processing functions such as summarisation, classification and enrichment.
- Multimodal processing, reuse and innovation in formats: beyond translation, proposals are encouraged to include AI functions that improve usability and discoverability and, where relevant, support the reuse and contextualisation of existing or archival material and the pooling of content from different media providers. They may also support interactive/immersive and infotainment-inspired experiences. This may also include, where relevant, experimentation with conversational and agentic access models, such as chatbot or AI-companion style interfaces, and new forms of storytelling or contextualisation.
Quality assurance and performance: workflows that include editorial oversight, targeted human review for high-risk content, and transparent signalling of AI-processed outputs, while addressing latency, compute efficiency and cost-aware deployment considerations to support participation by smaller media organisations.
3. Public-interest discovery, trust and adoption at scale
Key aspects in scope include:
- A structured exchange mechanism and sector coordination group shall be established to connect the pilot with relevant other EU funding programmes, e.g. Horizon Europe projects, and to convene key actors from the European media and technology sectors, with a view to maximising synergies and uptake.
- Public-interest discovery and user agency: search, navigation and recommendation approaches that improve cross-border visibility and pluralism, provide user controls (e.g. language/topic/geography), and avoid discriminatory outcomes, with transparent design principles rather than engagement-only optimisation, including clear presentation of source and context. Particular attention should be paid to core user-facing functions such as media catalogues, search, recommendation and, where relevant, user-modelling or personalisation features, provided these remain aligned with public-interest objectives.
- Trust, provenance and integrity-by-design: traceability of content origin and AI transformations (e.g., translated subtitles, summaries, dubbing), appropriate labelling and accountability mechanisms, and safeguards against manipulation and misleading distribution dynamics in support of democratic resilience, including measures appropriate to mixed ecosystems of media outlets and creators.
- Piloting, uptake and sustainable governance: real-world pilots with measurable KPIs and evaluation, practical onboarding and capacity-building assets (including for smaller/local media and, where relevant, structured cooperation with creators), and credible governance and sustainability pathways aligned with EU values, taking into account audience behaviours, distribution strategies and viable business models.
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Expected effects and impacts
The action is expected to strengthen the European media ecosystem by enabling pan-European, near-real-time access to professional news and public-interest information across EU languages, thereby reducing linguistic and cross-border distribution barriers, improving the reuse, contextualisation and cross-border circulation of such content across the Union, and widening audiences for content from all Member States. By providing multilingual AI-enabled processing and user-facing discovery features, it should improve the findability, accessibility and usability of trusted news content, including for audiences that do not regularly consume cross-border media, and help the sector respond to changing audience habits, including platform-mediated consumption, through more effective search, discovery, contextualisation and user-facing access to trusted content.
The action should also contribute to media pluralism and democratic resilience by broadening access to quality media content and supporting cross-border exposure to diverse sources and perspectives through public-interest discovery principles (user agency, transparency and non-discrimination). It is expected to increase trust in multilingual access by embedding provenance, traceability and clear signalling of AI transformations, alongside quality assurance processes appropriate for news contexts.
Finally, the action should deliver reusable platform capabilities, including, where appropriate, open-source building blocks, operational practices and governance approaches that can be adopted more broadly across Europe. Through structured coordination with other EU-funded initiatives and the proposed sector coordination, it should maximise interoperability, reuse of results and continuity, providing a credible pathway for scaling and future investment under subsequent funding rounds.
The action is also expected to help media organisations adapt to the evolving online environment, support the development of robust business models and practices, and foster pan-European cross-industry and cross-border cooperation, while facilitating future uptake through structured outreach and community-building around the infrastructure, including the collection and consolidation of stakeholder needs and obstacles to adoption, to inform future updates and scale-up.
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Expected results
The action may fund activities necessary to develop, integrate, test and prepare the uptake of a shared pan-European multilingual AI media infrastructure, including technical, organisational, user-facing and sector-ngagement activities that support future deployment and scale-up.
- Media Platforms coordination group and exchange mechanism: building on existing initiatives, establishment and operation of a structured exchange mechanism with relevant projects funded under other EU programmes (e.g. Horizon Europe), and bringing together key actors from the European media and technology sectors to build a community around the emerging infrastructure, identify sector needs, audience expectations and barriers to uptake, including future access, licensing and business models for AI-mediated retrieval and reuse of content, support cooperation around shared modules and architecture, attract private investment, and maximise synergies, reuse and continuity towards subsequent funding rounds (under the current or next MFF).
- Infrastructure implementation and integration: design and deployment of the core platform services, interfaces and APIs for near-real-time ingestion, processing and distribution, including interoperability and onboarding tools, and where relevant content pooling, reuse and streaming-related functionalities, as well as conformance testing of key interfaces and specifications, including, where relevant, agent-facing access and authentication models for trusted retrieval and reuse. This may also include, where relevant, open-source components or open-source development approaches for selected modules.
- AI-enabled multilingual processing, reuse and multimodal enrichment: integration and validation of AI-enabled transcription and translation/subtitling (and, where relevant, dubbing/voice-over), complemented by enrichment functions that improve usability and discoverability (e.g. summarisation, topic/entity tagging, accessibility features), as well as where relevant, support the reuse and contextualisation of existing or archival material and the pooling of content from different media providers, with news-grade quality assurance workflows and clear signalling of AI-transformed outputs.
- Citizen-facing discovery and user experience: implementation of search, navigation and recommendation features that support cross-border exposure, pluralism and user agency, including transparency measures, provenance/traceability and non-discrimination safeguards. This may also include, where relevant, experimentation with conversational access, AI-companion style interfaces, collective contextualisation services, and social-media-facing formats or referral pathways that improve discoverability and usability of trusted content.
- Real-world piloting, evaluation and reporting: operational pilot(s) with participating media organisations and measurable KPIs (e.g. onboarding time, language coverage, latency, usage and cross-border reach, quality and trust indicators), including user testing, sector feedback, monitoring and continuous improvement, as well as identification of barriers to uptake and conditions for wider deployment.
- Synergies with European AI Factories: where relevant, the consortium may draw on European AI Factories to access AI-optimised compute and support services for training, fine-tuning, benchmarking and stress-testing multilingual and multimodal AI pipelines under realistic operational and performance constraints.
- Governance, compliance and sustainability planning: arrangements for accountability, legal/rights compliance and risk management (integrity and resilience), alongside a credible sustainability and scale-up pathway beyond the project duration, including outreach to relevant stakeholders, requirements gathering and preparation for future uptake by the sector.
- Creative formats and creator engagement (where relevant):subcontracting specialised contributions from media artists and content creators to prototype and validate emerging formats and audience-facing experiences (e.g. short-form explainers, podcasts, interactive/immersive experiences), in alignment with professional editorial standards
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Eligibility Criteria
Regions / countries for funding
eligible entities
Education and training institution, Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) / Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Other, Private institution, incl. private company (private for profit), Public Body (national, regional and local; incl. EGTCs), Research Institution incl. University, Small and medium-sized enterprise (SME)
Mandatory partnership
Yes
Project Partnership
In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
- be legal entities (public or private bodies)
- be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.: EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs)
The call is open to legal entities established in the EU, in particular to online news and information/content platforms, newsbroadcasting stations, AI technology companies, content creators and creative partners, AI Factories, media organisations, legal/rights management organisations.
Proposals must be submitted by a consortium of at least 5 applicants (beneficiaries; not affiliated entities), which complies with the following conditions:
- minimum 5 independent entities from 5 different eligible countries
other eligibility criteria
Specific cases
Natural persons — Natural persons are NOT eligible (with the exception of self-employed persons, i.e. sole traders, where the company does not have legal personality separate from that of the natural person).
International organisations — International organisations are NOT eligible.
Entities without legal personality — Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees for the protection of the EU financial interests equivalent to that offered by legal persons.
EU bodies — EU bodies (with the exception of the European Commission Joint Research Centre) can NOT be part of the consortium.
Affiliated entities - Legal entities having a legal or capital link with applicants, which is neither limited to the action nor established for the sole purpose of its implementation, may take part in the action as affiliated entities, and may declare eligible costs as specified in section 10. For that purpose, applicants shall identify such affiliated entities in the proposal and application form.
Associations and interest groupings — Entities composed of members may participate as ‘sole beneficiaries’ or ‘beneficiaries without legal personality’.
EU restrictive measures — Special rules apply for entities subject to EU restrictive measures under Article 29 of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and Article 215 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU). Such entities are not eligible to participate in any capacity, including as beneficiaries, affiliated entities, associated partners, subcontractors or recipients of financial support to third parties (if any).
EU conditionality measures — Special rules apply for entities subject to measures adopted on the basis of EU Regulation 2020/2092. Such entities are not eligible to participate in any funded role (beneficiaries, affiliated entities, subcontractors, recipients of financial support to third parties, etc). Currently such measures are in place for Hungarian public interest trusts established under the Hungarian Act IX of 2021 or any entity they maintain (see Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2022/2506, as of 16 December 2022). The indicative list of affected entities (the trusts and the entities they maintain) is available under this link. This link will bring you to the official Annex to Hungarian Act IX of 2021.
Additional information
Topics
Relevance for EU Macro-Region
EUSAIR - EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region, EUSALP - EU Strategy for the Alpine Space, EUSBSR - EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, EUSDR - EU Strategy for the Danube Region
UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs)
project duration
24 months
Additional Information
Proposals must be submitted electronically via the Funding & Tenders Portal Electronic Submission System (accessible via the Topic page in the Calls for proposals section). Paper submissions are NOT possible.
Proposals (including annexes and supporting documents) must be submitted using the forms provided inside the Submission System.
Proposals must be complete and contain all the requested information and all required annexes and supporting documents:
- Application Form Part A — contains administrative information about the participants (future coordinator, beneficiaries and affiliated entities) and the summarised budget for the project (to be filled in directly online)
- Application Form Part B — contains the technical description of the project (template to be downloaded from the Portal Submission System, completed, assembled and re-uploaded)
- mandatory annexes and supporting documents (templates to be downloaded from the Portal Submission System, completed, assembled and re- uploaded):
- detailed budget table/calculator
- CVs (standard max 2 pages) of core project team
- activity reports of last year
- list of previous projects (key projects for the last 3 years) (template available in Part B)
- Please note that the amounts entered into the summarised budget table (filled in directly online) must correspond to the amounts calculated in the detailed budget table. In case of discrepancies, the amounts in the online summarised budget table will prevail.
Proposals are limited to maximum 70 pages (Part B).
Financial support to third parties is not allowed.
Call documents
Call Document PPPA-2026-CITIZEN-PLATFORMCall Document PPPA-2026-CITIZEN-PLATFORM(418kB)


