On Thursday 30 March, the European Commission adopted the third annual work programme under the European Defence Fund (EDF).
For 2023, this fund will allocate €1.2 billion to collaborative research and development projects in the field of defence. The funds will support projects in areas such as space, cyberspace, naval forces or aeronautics, including the development of the European Patrol Corvette (EPC) prototype, strategic airlift for outsize cargo or threat monitoring and protection of space assets.
The programme covers 34 themes structured around four thematic calls for proposals and three calls focusing on disruptive technologies and SMEs. These calls for proposals are expected to be published in April and open on 15 June 2023, with a deadline for submission on 22 November 2023.
Strengthening EUDIS
The Commission has also introduced a series of new measures to promote innovation under the ‘European Defence Innovation Scheme’ (EUDIS).
The European Defence Fund Work Programme for 2023 will add three new EUDIS measures, allocating a budget of approximately €220 million to the implementation of the package.
They will include a call for the organisation of a series of ‘defence hackathon’ events, calls for financial support to support the development of innovation clusters, or specific calls to further support the exploitation of civil society-funded research within the EU to test its applicability to military end-users.
See documents: https://aeur.eu/f/64u ; https://aeur.eu/f/64v ; https://aeur.eu/f/64w (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)