EUDIS stands for EU Defence Innovation Scheme. Enabled by the European Defence Fund, EUDIS will see a total investment ambition of close to EUR 2 billion until 2027. The Commission targets to fund EUR 1.46 billion from the EDF and expects to leverage between EUR 400 - 500 million from other public and private sources.
Targeting small players and non-traditional players in the defence industry ecosystem, in the defence sector, EUDIS embraces the entire innovation ecosystem by offering five tailor-made tracks. The tracks contain different opportunities for small players depending on their innovation maturity level:
- Put your novel idea to challenge: participate in hackathons; organise or take part in technology challenges
- Test and accelerate your innovation: apply for cascade funding from consortiums
- Migrate your innovation from civil to defence: consortia can build upon the results of civil EU-funded programmes and transfer the results to defence applications
- Improve your access to finance to scale-up: apply for the proposed Defence Equity Facility under InvestEU to receive funding (COMING SOON!)
- Empower SMEs: apply for open SME and disruptive technology calls, with beneficiaries eligible to receive business coaching and partake in match-making opportunities
EUDIS is part of the European Defence Fund (EDF). Further information on the EDF is available on its website.
Entities participating in the EUDIS projects should be located in the EU/Norway and not being controlled by non-EU/associated countries entities.
- As regards employees of entities that have been assessed as not subject to control by a non-associated third country or by a non-associated third-country entity: the Member State competent authorities are in charge of security clearance and if the person is handling/working with classified information (CI), then the national legislation on CI should apply. The employees will need to have the relevant permissions to have access to the information. The security framework is under the responsibility of the Member States. Therefore, any question concerning security should be addressed to them.
- As regards employees of entities that have been assessed as controlled by non-associated third countries (or third-country entities): there is a concrete obligation under Art 9(4)b) of the EDF Regulation for the employees or other persons involved in the action to have national security clearance issued by a Member State or an associated country, where appropriate. In such a case the obligation emanates directly from the EDF regulation and thus such persons are obliged to have security clearance by a Member State to be involved in the action.
In both cases, these employees are supposed to be located in the EU/Norway when performing the work.
The EUDIS annual calls for proposals are intergral part of the European Defence Fund’s Work Programme. It is published annually.
The 2023 calls are open with a deadline for submission of 22 November 2023. Please consult the EU Funding & Tenders Portal page dedicated to the EDF Programme or click on each EUDIS track in this webpage to consult specific EUDIS calls (it will lead you to EU Funding &Tenders Portal).
The granting authority (Commission) does not obtain ownership of the results produced under the action. Results belong to the beneficiary(-ies) that generated them. For the hackathons, the individuals/teams will own the generated intellectual property rights.
However, per established contractual practice, the Commission reserves the right to use non-sensitive information relating to the action and documents received from the beneficiaries for policy, information, communication, dissemination, and publicity purposes. This applies both during the action and afterwards.
National Focal Points (NFPs) support the implementation of the European Defence Fund (EDF), including EUDIS. NFPs are individuals nominated by EU Member States and countries associated to the EDF (Norway). They support the implementation of the EDF, for example, by reaching out to stakeholders or providing advice to potential applications or beneficiaries of the EDF programme. This includes EUDIS.