This is the main investment of the plan aimed at the core of the Spanish Science, Technology and Innovation System (SECTI): research activity. The investment includes a new generation of public calls for grants and subsidies aimed at reforming the SECTI, strengthening knowledge transfer and public-private partnerships.
This investment is intended to generate a copious supply of research projects for Spanish R&D groups and to enable them to collaborate with companies.
This investment of more than 1 billion euros will mobilise the research and innovation community in Spain to:
- Intensify its research and innovation activity.
- Promote the transfer of research results to society, with emphasis on collaboration with companies.
- Focus its activities on strategic lines, such as the green digital transition.
- Increase the presence of Spanish research groups in international competitive calls.
The planned calls are as follows:
- A new call for proof-of-concept projects: to fund projects to accelerate the transformation of ideas, knowledge or scientific results into products, goods, applications or benefits for the economy, society, culture, public policy or services. Activities will be aimed at progressing through the early stages of pre-competitive development of an idea and facilitating its practical implementation.
- A new call for interdisciplinary projects in strategic lines that will be financed by public-private consortia and whose strategic lines of action have been selected on the basis of their contribution to the recovery from the crisis, the competitiveness of Spanish actors in the international context, and their capacity to achieve a position of international leadership.
- A new call for research projects on the green digital transition: to fund projects developed by public sector researchers and private non-profit research organisations, which will aim to implement the green digital transition.
- Call for Public-Private Collaboration projects, "Collaboration Challenges": it is planned to reinforce this call (which has been carried out in previous years) by adding resources to promote public-private collaboration in the context of R&D.
- Call for International Collaboration Projects: It will enable the funding of SECTI research and innovation groups that are part of cross-border joint programming projects selected for funding by Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020 partnerships, such as the ERA-Net cofund, initiatives set up under Article 187 and 185 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and partnerships established under the Horizon Europe Framework Programme. The RRM funds included in this call will serve to complement the funding given for the implementation of R&D activities in the context of all these partnerships under Horizon Europe and/or Horizon 2020.
- Call for cutting-edge R&D projects oriented towards societal challenges: Science and Innovation Missions: large strategic pre-competitive research initiatives, carried out by a group of companies, with significant participation by research organisations, technology centres and universities, which aim to contribute to the development of previously identified thematic missions.
On the other hand, one of the most powerful tools to boost knowledge transfer is pre-commercial public procurement. Pre-commercial public procurement is a tool to foster innovation in the public sector, through the tendering of R&D services for the development of technology that can be used for the future provision of better public services. These are actions in areas where Spanish entities have demonstrated the capacity to make rapid progress in a real environment with high-potential technological singularities (green energy and its hybridisation with energy vectors of the future and high scalability), and where European capacities can clearly be improved and Spanish public-private knowledge presents significant advances (new space and its access to space, new treatment systems in nuclear medicine with high portability, biodegradable batteries, high-efficiency submarine systems, etc.). Pre-commercial public procurement encourages the transfer of knowledge generated in the public sector to the private sector.
The objective set out in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan is to fund more than 3,000 research projects.
