In December 2006, the SNOWMAN consortium opened its pilot call for trans-national research in the field of "Sustainable Management of Soil and Groundwater Pollution". SNOWMAN received a total of 23 project proposals, which have been evaluated in a stepwise process.

Almost 800.000€ have been available for the SNOWMAN call at the time of the Funding Recommendation Meeting in May 2007. Taking all 23 proposals received into account, the budget was over-subscribed by 3,5 times.

Each proposal had to contain at least two independent legal entities from at least two of the SNOWMAN partner countries (i.e. all consortia had to be transnational). Larger consortia offering a greater degree of trans-national collaboration were encouraged to apply.

Of the 23 proposals there were four with partners outside the SNOWMAN consortium (namely: Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, Russia, Spain) willing to bring in external funding into the respective projects.

Five research projects are funded by SNOWMAN. The smallest of these collects two organisations from two SNOWMAN partner countries. The largest SNOWMAN research consortium includes 11 organisations from six SNOWMAN partner countries and one organisation from the Czech Republic and Italy each.