North Macedonia IPA III Consortium Partner Challenge (SME Competitiveness & Green Transition)

DEEP Ecosystems is assembling a lean, delivery-driven consortium for a 36‑month EU IPA III Technical Assistance project (budget 3 500 000 EUR) supporting the Ministry of Economy of North Macedonia and key stakeholders.

The goal is to measurably improve SME competitiveness through

(1) administrative and regulatory optimisation (incl. hospitality/catering alignment and inspection reform),

(2) a repeatable access-to-finance deal-flow engine (angel/VC matchmaking + investment readiness), and

(3) practical CSR, circular economy and CBAM/decarbonisation readiness—under an EU-grade KPI/monitoring backbone. Collaboration value: partners will co-design and own concrete workstream outputs (sprints, cohorts, toolkits, SOPs, dashboards, adoption packs), not just reports.

We are looking for practice-driven organisations with strong references in at least one workstream (WS1–WS5), ideally with North Macedonia/Western Balkans anchoring and/or sizeable EU/IPA delivery experience (incl. contracts ≥€1.5m where relevant).