The State Plan for Scientific, Technical and Innovation Research 2021-2023 (hereinafter, the State R&D&I Plan), approved by Agreement of the Council of Ministers on 15 June 2021, is the programming instrument that enables the development, financing and execution of the public policies of the General State Administration in the field of R&D&I promotion and coordination.
The Plan is articulated through four state programmes which are developed through sub-programmes with specific objectives and which include annual and multi-annual public state aid dedicated to R&D&I activities which are granted through competitive calls for proposals as foreseen in article 22.1 of the Spanish Law. Law 38/2003 of 17 November 2003 on General Subsidies.
The Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial E.P.E. (hereinafter CDTI), in its capacity as a financing agent for the Law 14/2011 of 1 June on Science, Technology and Innovationis the main responsible for the State Programme for Catalysing Innovation and Business Leadership, which includes the State Sub-programme for Public-Private Partnerships.
This sub-programme includes, among other actions, Science and Innovation Missions, which are pre-competitive research projects led by companies that pursue relevant research that proposes solutions to cross-cutting and strategic challenges of Spanish society, improve the knowledge and technology base on which Spanish companies rely to compete, while stimulating public-private cooperation.
The Science and Innovation Missions programme is fully aligned with the initiative. Spain 2050which lays the foundations and proposals for a Long-Term National Strategy, anticipating the main challenges and problems that Spain must face in the next 30 years. The missions selected in this call address relevant aspects of two of the nine challenges set out in Spain 2050: the first one "Being more productive to grow better" and the fourth one "Becoming a carbon neutral, sustainable and climate change resilient society".
Likewise, the call for Science and Innovation Missions 2021 is included among the actions foreseen in the National Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Planwhich outlines the roadmap for the modernisation of the Spanish economy, the recovery of economic growth and job creation, for strong, inclusive and resilient economic reconstruction after the COVID crises, and for responding to the challenges of the next decade.
The missions identified are:
- Promote Spanish agriculture in the 21st century: sustainable, intelligent, efficient in the consumption of water resources and agricultural inputs and adapted to climate change.
- Promoting safe, efficient and clean energy for the 21st century.
- Boosting Spanish industry in the industrial revolution of the 21st century.
- Boosting the circular economy through new recycling and recovery technologies for polymer composite waste in Spain.
- Promoting information security, privacy and cybersecurity for the Spanish economy and society in the 21st century.
- Promoting sustainable and intelligent intermodal transport.
- Promote the development of tourism by exploiting the possibilities of technology.
- To promote the technological progress and training of the Spanish biopharmaceutical industry in order to foster R&D activities in the field of advanced therapies, vaccines and targeted therapies.
- Boosting high performance computing.
Calls for applications
- Call for applications 2019 (closed).
- Call 2021 (open).
