The theme includes industrial research, experimental development services, and business projects, also carried out in collaboration with universities and public research centers. It also provides funding for strengthening the structures and laboratories of universities and research centers and the technology transfer to companies (technology districts, innovation hubs).

The theme includes network infrastructure, broadband and ultra-broadband connectivity, and services for citizens and businesses. It also comprises interventions for multimedia educational networks and laboratories in schools, e-government projects, e-health services (single healthcare booking centers, services provided with a health card, online services for GPs), and e-inclusion (active citizenship, e-participation, public access centers to the web).

The theme includes incentives and services for creating new businesses and production plants or expanding and modernizing existing plants and production areas. It also supports financial engineering tools for businesses (such as guarantee funds, loans, and access to credit and venture capital funds).

The theme includes the construction of systems for the production of energy from renewable sources and the promotion of energy saving by citizens, businesses and public administration, including schools. It also includes actions for the diffusion of district heating and cooling and the development of cogeneration (electricity and heat) and trigeneration (electricity, heat and cold).

The theme includes interventions on waste and wastewater management. It also funds actions to prevent environmental risks, coastal erosion, and hydrogeological instability, including actions for adaptation to climate change, promoting biodiversity, and protecting nature.

The theme includes infrastructural interventions for the protection and conservation of cultural heritage. It also includes interventions for the improvement of tourist services and for the promotion and valorization of natural resources.

The theme includes strengthening railway lines, the road network, port connections, and intermodality. It also promotes interventions that encourage sustainable mobility and favor public transport in congested urban areas.

The theme includes active measures for the labour market, the lifelong learning in companies, promoting effective ways of organizing work, supporting self-employment. It also includes measures to improve access to employment and increase women's work-life balance.

The theme includes interventions for the social and working integration of disadvantaged people, investments for creating or redeveloping infrastructures, and social and socio-health services (such as kindergartens, residential and semi-residential structures, and services for older people or people with disability). It also includes public housing interventions, healthcare infrastructures and services, projects to promote active and healthy aging, equal opportunities, and active participation.

The theme includes interventions to promote educational success and social inclusion while combatting school dropout. It funds actions to improve student learning and enhance excellence, and interventions favoring school staff (such as training) and adult education.

The theme includes projects to strengthen and modernize national, regional, and local public administration. It encourages the development of digital skills, the availability of data and information, and open government. It also includes projects to improve the programming, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and communication of programs financed by cohesion policies.