Europe is at war. Not just since February 2022, but actually since 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea. That incident triggered a reaction in the former European Commission under President Juncker. It was decided to establish a defense fund to strengthen European defence industry and military capacities. We all know what happened later on and as such establishing the fund is almost prophetical. Calls are up this autumn for the funding scheme and hence I considered it a good idea to record an authoritative The Grant introduction to the funding scheme to help everybody that is working with proposals for these calls at this moment.

I invited expert on the programme Margherita Volpe, R&I Consultant - Security & Space Knowledge Area Leader at Zabala Innovation Consulting, into the virtual podcast studio to take us all through the programme.

The episode is divided into two. In the first part we cover the political and strategic background of the funding scheme and the structure of the programme including types of funding, the content categories, typical project activities and call round frequency.

In the second part we dig into target group stakeholders, how to apply, the evaluation regime, what happens when funding is received and finally do’s and don’t’s.

Time codes part 1:

00:12:22: European Commission priorities and strategies on EDF

00:23:41: Structure of the funding programme

Time codes part 2:

00:02:00 Target group stakeholders

00:07:24 How to apply

00:34:08 Evaluation

00:45:14 Do's and don't's

00:47:12 The toughest challenge