Minister Yuriko Backes has announced a new call for defence research and development projects, focusing on dual-use capabilities and allocating €13.8 million towards national companies for the 2025–2027 period.

Luxembourg's Defence Minister Yuriko Backes on Monday launched a new call for defence research and development (R&D) projects. The call was jointly made with Lex Delles, the Minister for the Economy, and Stéphanie Obertin, the Minister for Research and Higher Education.

After a similar initiative, put forward in 2022, was deemed successful, government officials, in cooperation with the National Research Fund (FNR) and Luxinnovation, are hoping to replicate the positive effects once more. This time, focus is to be put on dual-use capabilities that can be used for both civilian and military purposes, including areas such as 'Smart Mobility', 'Resilience' and 'Strategic Foresight and Climate Change Adaptation'.

The call is exclusively reserved for national companies. The budget allocated by the Defence Directorate is €13.8 million for the period of 2025–2027, including €7.5 million for the Innovation Fund and €6.3 million for the FNR.

"With this call, we will encourage research and development of innovative defence projects in Luxembourg. We will support our national companies and research centres and help them gain access to EU and NATO markets and production chains", said Minister Backes at the official presentation of the initiative.

Minister Delles emphasised that "the Luxembourg market has great potential for innovation in the field of sustainability. I am convinced that this call for projects represents an excellent opportunity to promote collaboration between companies and research centres and will give rise to innovative projects that will benefit both the economy and its sustainability as well as defence and society."

Despite this call for projects, Luxembourg is still far away from the NATO goal of having members invest a minimum of 2% of their GDP into defence purposes. At present, the Grand Duchy's investments equal only 1.29%, or €700 million.

Nevertheless, Luxembourg is set to achieve the EU goal of investing 2% of said defence budget into R&D. With 3.4%, the government is on track to surpass the minimum rate, with €26.9 million stipulated in 2025, and €29.1 million in 2026.

The deadline for companies to file their project proposals is 14 June 2024, with initiatives slated to be launched at the beginning of next year.