Speaking before the Security and Defence (SEDE) subcommittee of the European Parliament on 25 January, Denis Roger, the EDA’s Director for European Synergies and Innovation (ESI), hailed the good and effective cooperation between the European Commission and the European Defence Agency on preparing the upcoming Preparatory Action (PA) on defence research which is close to its official launch. “The EDA now stands ready to sign a new Delegation Agreement with the Commission relating to the PA and building on the positive experience of the Pilot Project”, he said. Philippe Brunet, the Commission’s Director for Space Policy and Defence within DG GROW, who also participated in the SEDE debate, indicated that the delegation agreement should be signed quickly, if possible in March 2017.
Mr Roger recalled the importance of the Pilot Project (PP) on defence research which is currently being implemented through a delegation agreement signed in November 2015 between the Commission and the EDA, has proved a great opportunity to test the interface between the Commission and the EDA in the implementation of a centrally-funded defence research scheme at EU level.
Several ‘lessons learned’ from the PP are being applied in the preparation for the PA, for instance the need to have some more innovative and adapted to defence specificities Intellectual Property Rules (IPR) or to have a wider pool of evaluation experts available. “For the Preparatory Action, the basic rule should be to draw the lessons already learnt from the Pilot Project, to keep the way of working when it demonstrated to be satisfactory and to improve what needs to be improved, while adapting to the increased scale”, Mr Roger said. In particular, he referred to the key ‘upstream role’ the EDA has in consulting all stakeholders (government, industry and RTOs) about key research priorities and consolidating them with Member States. He also mentioned the execution and exploitation (‘downstream’) roles the Agency played in the PP and which it would also have to play in the PA implementation.
Focusing on priority military needs
Mr Roger stressed the need to make sure that collaborative defence research undertaken under the Preparatory Action will be linked to priority military capability needs of Member States: “I must insist on this point, which is a key specificity of Defence Research. Since the market is a monopsony, the only buyer being the Ministries of Defence, it is absolutely essential to make sure that the technical requirements of the projects match the future Capability needs defined by Member States and reflected in the Capability Development Plan endorsed at the level of the Ministers of Defence”. “In accordance with article 45 of the Treaty on the European Union, EDA has a key role to play in guaranteeing this consistency between Capability and Research priorities”, he stated.
EDA prepares for PA implementation role
Implementing the PA means that the EDA will also have to adapt its own structures because compared to managing a relatively small Pilot Project (three projects with a total budget of €1.4 million), the task of managing a substantially bigger Preparatory Action (€90 million budget over three years with probably more than a dozen projects in total) will be much more of a challenge.
That’s why the EDA has already set up a dedicated PA Unit in order to manage EDA’s ‘upstream role’ and its forthcoming implementation role. It already includes four people and additional growth is anticipated once the delegation agreement is signed. The first short term task of that new unit will be the practical implementation of the Preparatory Action Work Programme: launch of the calls, organisation of the evaluation and signing of the grant agreements. “But we also need to have a longer term vision: a key success indicator of the preparatory Action will be the usefulness of the results for Member States’ future Capability Development Programmes”, Mr Roger said.
EDA’s existing structures (CapTechs, Project Teams, Working Groups) will contribute to make sure that the PA results are fully taken into account and to promote follow-on projects and programmes.
The PA unit could also have a key role, in permanent coordination with the European Commission, to draw, in real time, the lessons learnt from the Preparatory Action that can benefit to the setting up of a potential wider future European Defence Research Programme (EDRP) after 2020.
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