R&T Projects and Programmes

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The major objective of EDA’s R&T activity is to catalyse European R&T collaborations by supporting R&T stakeholders in generation, developing and implementing specific cooperations. The Agency manages a large portfolio of collaborative R&T projects covering a wide range of technologies.

In general, these collaborative R&T efforts are generated within the CapTech network under the provisions of the Joint Action establishing the Agency. The type of cooperative instrument most used by pMS is the category B while the option for a category A type is the choice when a set of technologies may contribute to common capability enhancement in a identified domain:

CATEGORY B PROJECTS AND PROGRAMMES

These type of projects are established by one or more pMS and, in principle, are open to participation by all pMS. However, in practice, Category B Projects or Programmes tend to involve a smaller number of pMS. Several examples of completed Category B Projects can be found on this website.

CATEGORY A PROJECTS AND PROGRAMMES

One or more participating Member States (pMS) or the Agency’s Chief Executive can propose this type of cooperation and presume general participation of all 26 pMS unless they decide to opt-out. Category A Projects and Programmes tend to involve a large number of pMS. Examples of this type of collaboration are the Joint Investment Programmes on Force Protection and on Innovative Concepts and Emerging Technologies.

Legal Instrument

The General Rules and Procedures and the General Provisions approved by the Steering Board of the European Defence Agency on 10 June 2010 will in principle be used to set up R&T Projects and Programmes.

R&T Projects User Guide

In January 2012, EDA launched an online R&T Projects User Guide, an easy-to-read tool that aims at provide support during the preparation of collaborative R&T Projects in the framework of the Agency. The User Guide is available here.