On Wednesday 20 July, the European Commission announced its intention to grant funding of almost €1.2 billion to 61 collaborative defence research and development projects that have been selected following the first ever calls for proposals under the European Defence Fund (EDF) in June 2021 (see EUROPE 12753/20). The European Commission had received 142 project proposals.
€322 million will go to fund 31 research projects and €845 million will be allocated to 30 large-scale projects for developing systems and technologies for defence capabilities.
692 entities from all Member States and Norway will participate in the selected projects, of which 43% are SMEs, and will receive 18% of the funds. Of these 700 entities, 178 are from France, 156 from Italy and 147 from Spain, which are the three most represented countries. On average, 18 entities from eight Member States (or Norway) take part in each project.
With the proposals selected in light of funding, the EDF will support projects on high-end defence capabilities, such as the next generation of combat aircraft (€189.8 million), tanks (€154.7 million) and ships (€103.5 million) as well as air and missile defence (€100 million).
Technologies that are critical for defence, such as military cloud, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, space, cyberspace and medical countermeasures, are also included.
See the details: https://aeur.eu/f/2pc (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)