Call for proposals

The European Investment Bank Institute proposes a new EIBURS sponsorship under its Knowledge Programme

(2018/C 60/14)

The Knowledge Programme of the European Investment Bank Institute channels its research grants through different schemes, one of which is:

EIBURS provides grants to university departments or research centres associated with universities in EU, candidate or potential candidate countries working on research topics of major interest to the Bank. EIBURS sponsorships, of up to EUR 100 000 per year for a period of three years, are awarded through a competitive process to interested university departments or research centres with recognised expertise in the selected area. Successful proposals entail the delivery of a variety of outputs that will be the subject of a contractual agreement with the European Investment Bank.

For the academic year 2018/2019, the EIBURS programme is seeking proposals on a new research theme:

European policymakers are working intensively on drawing up a common European foreign and security policy, linking domestic security to relationships with neighbouring regions under the EU’s External Action and aiming to make the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) more effective. This reaching of a consensus on new common policy areas in this field has become even more relevant in the light of the UK leaving the EU. Broaching this new policy area could have significant budgetary and financing implications for Member States, including the goal of achieving efficiency gains by pooling resources. An example could be Europe-wide procurement tenders, instead of predominantly national tendering. The objective of this research is to make an assessment of the economic effects of coordinating European joint security and defence expenditures and the impact on economic growth and innovation capability. Economic and operational efficiency gains seem to be a prime motive for such an evolution towards integration. However, there is still the need to know more about the actual size of the economic effects of such measures.

The proposed research programme will shed more light on the size of the economic resources (expenditures, personnel, etc.) that the Member States of the European Union devote to defence and security and try to identify the areas with the largest scope for efficiency gains, in particular through avoiding inefficient duplication of expenditures. It will thereby also look at the subsectors of economic activities and regions that are most affected by military expenditures. The role and size of the defence budget in the overall public expenditure budget should be examined in detail, along with the current sources of financing. An important aspect is also the contribution of defence expenditure to boosting both science and innovation activity. The research should be able to assess the implications of an envisaged increase of defence budgets, in particularly to the NATO target of 2 % of GDP.

The EIB invites research proposals covering the following points:

The project may involve any additional research activity that the university centre wishes to undertake with the sponsorship, such as: (i) the organisation of seminars or conferences; (ii) the creation of databases; and (iii) in-depth case studies.

Proposals should be submitted in English by 15 April 2018 24:00 (CET). Proposals submitted after this date will not be considered. Proposals should be sent by email to:

Events.EIBInstitute@eib.org

For more exhaustive information on the EIBURS selection process and on the EIB Institute, please visit: http://institute.eib.org/