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Survey on Key Digital Technologies (Chips) Joint Undertaking Calls for Proposals

With the second Key Digital Technologies call currently open, this questionnaire aims to collect information about barriers to participation from the perspective of potential applicants.

Objective

The Key Digital Technologies Joint Undertaking (KDT JU) was established in November 2021 as the successor of the ECSEL Joint Undertaking. Currently, the second call, based on Work Programme 2022, is open. Funding to projects is provided by a combination of EU funding (via the Joint Undertaking) and national funding (via Participating States). The advantage of this combination of funding is that much more funding is available for microelectronics research projects and that national and European priorities can be aligned.

Both ECSEL and KDT calls contain topics that are open to any proposals that fit the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA). Such proposals could be Research and Innovation Actions or Innovation Actions. Given the very wide scope of the SRIA, one might expect that a very large number of proposals would be submitted to these ‘open topics’, covering a very wide range of subjects. However, this did not happen in previous calls. One could conclude that a large part of the wider community may find the ECSEL/KDT calls not very attractive.

This questionnaire aims to collect information about barriers to participation to KDT calls, as perceived by potential applicants.

Background

On 8 February 2022, the European Commission has published its proposal for a European Chips Act. As part of this proposal, the KDT JU would be responsible for the implementation of the majority of the Chips for Europe Initiative, would manage a new part of the Digital Europe Programme, would increase its Horizon Europe budgets, and would change its name to ‘Chips JU’.

Together with the other members of the Joint Undertaking, the European Commission is committed to put in place the best conditions for stakeholders in the KDT and Chips JU, taking into account their new objectives. Modalities of the past may no longer be the most suited modalities for the KDT and/or Chips JU.

Several stakeholders have indicated that they perceive some barriers to participate to the calls of the KDT JU and its predecessor the ECSEL JU. This questionnaire aims to identify the most pressing barriers (which may be as simple as page limits or more complex such as additional requirements of national authorities), so that they can be addressed and ideally removed.

Link to the questionnaire

The questionnaire can be found here.

Target group(s)

All professionals who in principle could be interested in submitting proposals in the scope of the KDT Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda.

How to submit your contribution?

You can only reply to this consultation online.

If you leave the questionnaire for 90 minutes without activity, your contribution will not be saved due to a time-out. This is much more than the time necessary to complete the questionnaire. However, you have the opportunity to save your draft answers as a pdf.

The questionnaire is only available in English.

Multiple submissions

Given the nature of the questionnaire, we request individuals to submit one filled-in questionnaire only.

Usage of the data submitted

Since this questionnaire collects data on potential difficulties or barriers in the application process all (non-personal) information provided in part A may be published in an aggregated form. The personal data provided in part B ("Information about you") will not be published and will only be used in case clarifications are needed.

View the questionnaire

To submit a valid questionnaire, you must at least answer all the compulsory questions and click the "submit" button on the final page of the questionnaire. Partially completed questionnaires which have not been submitted will not be analysed but will be counted for statistical reasons.

Period of consultation

The survey will remain open until Friday, 30 September 2022.

Next steps

After closure of the public consultation, the Commission will analyse and process the replies received and publish them on this web page. The analysis is expected to be published in Autumn 2022.

Privacy statement

Personal data and contributions are dealt with according to the privacy statement which can be found here.