Non-thematic research actions by SMEs and research organisations

It is very important that the correct organisation status is reflected in the Part A of the proposal. DG DEFIS uses it for verifying eligibility participants at the time of the proposal submission, for example whether the SME self-assessment has been conducted as required by the SME calls.

If you have made some changes in your PIC after you have created a proposal, you will have to manually update the PIC at step "participants" to refresh data in your proposal.

To proceed, we invite you to:

1. Save and exit part A (if you are editing it at the moment)

2. Click on "Back to participants list", below the annexes

3. In the organization's section concerned, click on "change organization"

4. Confirm that you want to proceed - Enter another PIC (any other PIC will work) and click on "Use"

5. Click on "Save" at the bottom of the page

6. Click again on "Change organization" and enter back the correct PIC - Click on "Use"

7. Click on "Save and go to next step" at the bottom of the page

Please go back in Part A, section participants, to save and validate new data.

You will need to submit again your proposal to take those changes into consideration at the evaluation.

If after following these steps the status still appears in the part A, please repeat this procedure by adding this extra step between steps 5 and 6:

• Enter the Part A, section participants, validate and click on the "save and Exit" button (It should show the data of the other organisation).

Yes, it is possible to participate in the same call in more than one proposals, as long as the proposals are different.

Research organisations can participate in any EDF call, except in the LS-DA-SME call, unless they also qualify as an SME and successfully complete the SME self-assessment. For the LS-RA-SMERO call, their share of the total requested EDF grant amount for the action cannot exceed 40% of the total requested grant amount, unless they also qualify as an SME

As sub-contractors, Research Organisations (RO) could participate to any calls and topics, but for SME and SMERO calls subcontracting costs cannot exceed 30% of the total eligible costs for each beneficiary and affiliated entity.

It is also possible for a Research Organisation to assume the role of Project Coordinator, except for the LS-DA-SME and LS-RA-SMERO calls, unless this research organisation is also an SME and successfully completes the SME self-assessment.

Indeed if the Research Organisation is also an SME it should justify this by completing successfully the SME self-assessment.

Other types of entities (than RO) are not eligible to participate in the SME calls as partners (beneficiaries and affiliated entities). However, such other entities may participate in other roles, such as associated partners, subcontractors, third parties giving in-kind contributions, etc. (see section 13 of the call documents).

On 13 July 2026, the European Union and Ukraine (UA) signed the Association Agreement on the participation of Ukraine in the European Defence Fund (EDF). This Association Agreement will formally enter into force once the Parties have notified each other of the completion of their respective internal procedures necessary for that purpose.

When the Association Agreement enters into force, legal entities established in Ukraine will become eligible as beneficiaries, affiliated entities and subcontractors involved in the actions supported by the EDF under the conditions laid down in Regulation (EU) 2021/697. In the meantime, Ukrainian legal entities may already apply and be considered as consortium members for the EDF Calls for proposals for 2026.

If the Association Agreement has not entered into force by the Grant Agreement Preparation (GAP) stage (should the proposal be selected for funding), the consortium would be responsible for ensuring that the proposal continues to meet the eligibility criteria. Subject to the technical nature of the proposal and the specific results of the evaluation, this could be achieved by changing the role of Ukrainian legal entities from beneficiaries, affiliated entities, or subcontractors to associated partners or suppliers, and/or by replacing them with eligible entities.

For clarity, the eligibility situation of Ukrainian (UA) legal entities before the Association Agreement enters into force is as follows:

1. An UA legal entity may already be considered an associated partner (AP) of the consortium, under the conditions of Article 9(6) of the EDF Regulation. APs do not receive funding for the costs they incur. UA entities intending to participate as AP may register in the same way as organisations from the EU Member States (for more information see webgate.ec.europa.eu)

2. The EDF consortia may also consider UA entities in the selection procedures for the purchases of goods (e.g., equipment – ranging from big ones to petty goods – consumables and supplies), works or services (e.g., consultancy ones) required for the implementation of an EDF project. Please note that such procurement may not, in particular, constitute a core task of the project as set out in the description of the action in Annex 1 of the Grant Agreement, or exceed 10 % of the total eligible costs of the action or require access to classified information.

3. In addition, all EDF 2026 call topics provide for financial support to third parties (i.e. cascade funding), under which UA entities may participate as third-party beneficiaries, subject to the conditions set out in the relevant call.

4. Finally, as provided for in Article 9(4) of EDF Regulation, a legal entity established in the Union or in an associated country and controlled by a non-associated third country or a non-associated third-country entity is eligible to participate as a recipient or subcontractor involved in an action only if guarantees approved by the Member State or the associated country in which it is established, in accordance with its national procedures, are made available to the Commission. This is a general rule applicable to all EDF Calls.

No, subcontractors or associated partners can be other than SMEs (e.g. mid-cap or other). However, for each beneficiary/affiliated entities, subcontracting is strictly limited to 30% of its eligible costs.

Yes, you can resubmit a previous proposal provided it fits the call conditions of the current year.

Please make sure to update the proposal though as there may have been developments in the state of the art etc.

You should also note the previous proposal number in the Part A question on whether the proposal has been submitted within the last two years.

To avoid this situation you need to make sure that you have activated the “optimise for compatibility” option in Excel. This might be needed even if you are not using Office 365.

You will need to restart filling in the form from the empty template.

As indicated in the call document, Part B and annexes need to be submitted, via the Funding & Tenders Portal submission service, as a single password-protected zip file, using AES-256 encryption.

The encrypted zip file may itself contain encrypted annexes using the same encryption method, for sensitivity reasons. This may be the case, for example, for entity-specific annexes like the Actual Indirect Cost Methodology Declaration or Ownership Control Declaration).

All corresponding passwords (together with the proposal ID and the name of the zip file(s)) need to be sent to the Commission by their respective originator, before the proposal submission deadline, through the following EUSurvey ec.europa.eu or at the following email address: DEFIS-EDF-PROPOSALS-PWD@ec.europa.eu.

Alternatively, you can encrypt your Part B and Annexes through the DG DEFIS DEFEND-S SNC encrypt file service:

1. Connect and login to DEFEND-S with your EU Login at defend-s-edf.defis.service.ec.europa.eu

2. On landing page select [Encryption] module

3. Upload your local already zipped but not yet encrypted file including the Part B and Annexes for encryption

4. DEFEND-S will send you an email notification when the encrypted file will be available for download. The encrypted file will be available for download only for maximum 24 hours

5. Download the encrypted file and submit it through the Electronic Submission System

6. There is no need to separately send the password to DG DEFIS

Please note that your file has not been submitted for evaluation through the DEFEND-S encryption. You still need to download the file and upload it through the Submission system at the EU Funding & Tenders Portal.

Proposal should start from the Cover page (template page 3.). The Annexes in EDF are submitted on a separate documents, and the history of changes can be deleted. The sections 3-7 of the template that are not applicable for Lump Sum Grants for Non-thematic Disruptive Actions can be deleted. No other parts, such as declarations should be deleted. The Part B beyond 50 pages will be deleted from the proposal, and may affect negatively the evaluation and/or eligibility of the proposal.

No. Beneficiaries and affiliated entities must register in the Participant Register — before submitting the proposal. They will have to be validated by the Central Validation Service (REA Validation) before grant signature only. At that stage for the validation, they will be requested to upload documents showing legal status and origin.

For proposals submitted to calls for EDF research actions (RA), no letters for support are requested. In view of equal treatment of all proposals, when such support letters are included in a proposal, they are not taken into account during the evaluation.

A lump sum grant means that the grant funding will reimburse a fixed amount, based on a lump sum or financing not linked to costs. The amount will be fixed upfront by the granting authority on the basis of the estimated project budget and funding rates that depend on the type of activities and participants (see section 2 of the Call documents).

In EDF calls where SME status is an eligibility criteria (DA-SME-NT and RA-SMERO-NT) the SME status of applicants has to be supported by a submitted SME self-assessment with data no older than two years old at the time of the proposal submission. The status may be verified by the Validation Service during the grant agreement preparation and has to be valid at grant signature.

If the SME status changes during the project implementation due to organic growth of the entity, the eligibility of the entity remains valid during the implementation. If the SME status changes due to other reasons, the Commission needs to assess whether such change might imply one of the conditions for termination of the grant.

At the proposal submission stage, applicants are obliged to provide Ownership Control Declaration (OCD) by filling in the mandatory templateWord.

Applicants declaring “non-EU control” status in their OCD may (but are not required at proposal submission stage) submit a description of MEASURES PUT IN PLACE through the Ownership Control Guarantees templateWord document.

APPROVAL BY THE COMPETENT AUTHORITY part of this template may also be submitted during Grant Agreement Preparation stage. As explained in the template instructions, using approval template is recommended but not mandatory for national competent authorities.

During Grant Agreement Preparation stage all “non-EU control” participants selected for funding will be required to provide the Ownership Control Guarantees approved by national competent authorities.

The new Ownership Control Declaration (OCD) template requires information on the proposal. Moreover, as a novelty, there is a separate template to be filled in for the part on the guarantees, which must be project specific.

If you are participating in more than one project in a specific EDF call for proposals, when filling in the new OCD template, you could provide in the “project name cell” the list all the EDF projects for that call in which your entity is part of the consortium submitting a proposal. This OCD may be reused across different EDF proposals, provided that the information contained in the declaration remains accurate, complete, and up to date, and that the ownership and control situation of the entity has not changed since the date of signature. The declaration must be signed by an authorised representative of the entity, and the date of signature should be sufficiently recent to reflect the current ownership and control structure of the entity.

Please be aware that the template has been updated for EDF 2026 calls, and that you must use the latest version.

When assessing the control of a legal entity participating in EDF, the Guidance on participation in EU calls with ownership and control restrictionsPDF apply. In the case of a natural person controlling a legal entity, if the natural person has dual nationality (EU and Non-EU) she/he will be considered as EU national.

When submitting a proposal, the participating entities (Beneficiaries, Affiliated entities, Subcontractors involved in the action, and associated partners) must fill in the new ownership control declaration template (version 2026). If the entity is subject to non-Eu control, by a non-Eu country, non-EU country entity or non-EU country national, the entity must tick the box “Declaration- Non-EU Controlled”. The entity needs to indicate which is/are the non-EU country(ies) of control. If it is Norway, the entity must tick in the template the box “YES” in the question “are the non-EU country eligible country for participation in the call”. Should this be the case, the entity is deemed to be eligible, and it does not need to provide the security guarantee.

If the entity has participated in other EU funded projects, and it has been the object of a ownership control assessment, and its control situation has not changed since that assessment, the entity can tick as well the box “declaration- no change”.