Development of innovative and future-oriented defence solutions.
EDF Research Actions
Basic Information
- Identifier
- EDF-2021-OPEN-D-SME
- Programme
- Open call dedicated to SMEs for development of innovative and future-oriented defence solutions
- Programme Period
- 2021 - 2027
- Status
- Closed (31094503)
- Opening Date
- September 8, 2021
- Deadline
- December 8, 2021
- Deadline Model
- single-stage
- Budget
- €36,000,000
- Min Grant Amount
- –
- Max Grant Amount
- –
- Expected Number of Grants
- –
- Keywords
- EDF-2021-OPEN-D-SMEEDF-2021-OPEN-D
Description
- Innovative, rapid and cost-effective solutions for defence applications;
- Ground-breaking or novel concepts and approaches, new promising future technological improvements or the application of technologies or concepts previously not applied in the defence sector;
- Enhanced innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of SMEs that can make a difference in the future;
- Potential for future market creation for SMEs, especially by facilitating access of SMEs to defence markets and supply chains;
- Contribution to the development of European technological and industrial ecosystems and to the strengthening of European defence supply chains.
Objective:Specific challenge
This call encourages the driving role of SMEs in bringing forward innovation, agility and ability to adapt technologies from civil to defence applications and to turn technology and research results into products in a fast and cost-efficient way.
Scope:The proposals must address innovative defence products, solutions and technologies, including those that can improve readiness, deployability and sustainability of EU forces in all spectrum of tasks and missions, for example in terms of operations, equipment, basing, energy solutions, new surveillance systems.
The proposals could address any subject of interest for defence.
Targeted activities
The proposals must cover one or more activities eligible for a development action, as referred in article 10.3 of the EDF Regulation:
- Activities that aim to increase interoperability and resilience, including secured production and exchange of data, to master critical defence technologies, to strengthen the security of supply or to enable the effective exploitation of results for defence products and technologies;
- Studies, such as feasibility studies to explore the feasibility of new or upgraded products, technologies, processes, services and solutions;
- The design of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology as well as the definition of the technical specifications on which such a design has been developed, including any partial tests for risk reduction in an industrial or representative environment;
- The system prototyping of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology;
- The testing of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology;
- The qualification of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology;
- The certification of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology;
- The development of technologies or assets increasing efficiency across the life cycle of defence products and technologies.
However, the proposals must cover at least one activity among the last six in the above list (i.e. design and beyond).
Functional requirements
This call is open to any technology development for defence. Proposals should describe the targeted functionalities and the foreseen means to measure progress toward the achievements of these functionalities.
Eligibility & Conditions
Conditions
1. Admissibility conditions: described in section 3 of the call document
Proposal page limits and layout: 64 pages for Section 6 + Section 7 of Part B of the Submission form; 2 pages per work package for Section 8 of Part B of the Submission form. Layout conditions as described in the Notice of Part B of the Submission form.
2. Eligible countries: described in section 3 of the call document
3. Other eligibility conditions: described in section 3 of the call document
4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in section 3 of the call document
Submission and evaluation processes: described section 3 of the call document and the Online Manual
Award criteria, scoring and thresholds: described in section 3 of the call document
Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in section 3 of the call document
6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in section 3 of the call document
Call documents:
The following documents can be found at this link:
- Calls and conditions
o EDF 2021 call texts and conditions for the calls
- Submission forms*
o Part A: Standard application form (EDF)
o Part A sup: Supplementary application form (EDF)
o Part B: Description of the action (EDF)
o Annex 1 & 2 - Budget tables
o Appendix to Annex 1 & 2, including a correspondence table for applicants and affiliated entities opting for actual indirect costs
o Annex 3 - Declaration of honour (DoH) applicants and affiliated entities
o Annex 4 - IPR on background information
o Annex 5 - Industry related information
o Annex 6 - Declaration of ownership and control
o Annex 7 - Operational capacity and resources
o Annex 8 - Mid-cap self-assessment form
* Final submission forms will be available directly on the submission module in the Funding and Tenders Portal once the calls are open (9 September)
- Guide for applicants
o EDF Guide for applicants
o Guidance on How to complete your Ethics self-assessment
Additional documents:
- Model grant agreements
o EDF actual cost MGA (coming soon)
o EDF lump sum MGA (coming soon)
- Security
o EDF Programme Security Instruction (PSI) (coming soon)
- Regulations
o EU Financial Regulation 2018/1046
- Work programmes
o EDF Work Programme 2022-part 1
- Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment
- Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual
- Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions
Support & Resources
For help related to this call, please contact: [email protected]
Funding & Tenders Portal FAQ – Submission of proposals.
IT Helpdesk – Contact the IT helpdesk for questions such as forgotten passwords, access rights and roles, technical aspects of submission of proposals, etc.
Online Manual – Step-by-step online guide through the Portal processes from proposal preparation and submission to reporting on your on-going project. Valid for all 2021-2027 programmes.
Latest Updates
Please make sure that you have checked the latest version of the EDF FAQ available here.
In order to cope with the 100 MB size limit we recommend that all pdf files are generated with the highest possible compression rate compliant with readable content.
If the proposal size remains above the 100 MB limit after achieving the highest compression, the applicants, affiliated entities and subcontractors involved in the action are given the opportunity to upload individually on their Participant’s page on the Funding & Tender Opportunities portal specific supporting documents that are requested as part of the submission of the proposal.
This possibility to upload document on the their Participant’s page on the Funding & Tender Opportunities portal is strongly conditioned to the following elements:
- the type of document that can be uploaded is exclusively limited to the documents that should otherwise be attached to Annex 6 – Declaration of Ownership and Control (e.g. minutes of shareholders meetings, documents related to ownership structure or corporate governance);
- the documents shall be uploaded individually by the entities on their own Participant account (i.e. own PIC – no grouping of multiple entities’ documents under a single PIC) before the submission deadline as indicated on the Call Page on the Funding & Tender Portal;
- the documents shall be uploaded via the Document section in the PIC account/Add new document/under type “Other”;
- the documents shall not include ID documents of individuals.
If you revert to this possibility for several documents to be normally attached to Annex 6, please indicate it in Annex 6 by checking the box in column P for the corresponding attachments and by adding in column R the name of the corresponding file followed by “provided on the participant’s page”.
To access the participant’s portal, click on “Login” on the top right hand side of any page of the Funding & tenders (europa.eu). Then access to the right page via: “My Organisation(s)” then “Actions” then “Modify Organisation”. Then in the “Documents” tab then “Add new document”. Upload your document(s) and indicate “other” in “Document type”.
If the solution proposed above does not solve the size issue, please revert to us using the following email address: [email protected]
EDF Model Grant Agreements for Lump Sum and actual costs grants are now available in the section Reference documents of the Funding & Tender Portal.
EDF Model Grant Agreements for Lump Sum and actual costs grants are now available in the section Reference documents of the Funding & Tender Portal.
Clarification about the 30% limit to which non-SMEs can participate as subcontractors.
EDF Guide for applicants now available here, as well as revised versions of previously published documents!
2021 calls for proposals and conditions for the calls as well as Submission form templates are available here since 5 July afternoon.