The Center for Technological and Industrial Development, of the Government of Spain, has selected Novadays in a public tender for the first impact assessment of an aid scheme for R&D carried out in Spain.
The CDTI R&D aid scheme has an annual budget of EUR 800 million, which makes it a large scheme within the meaning of Article 1(2)(a) of the GBER.
This award, together with the one made by the CDTI in 2010 for the Evaluation of the CENIT Program, confirms Novadays as a reference company in evaluation of public research and innovation policies in Spain.
The CDTI is included in the Law of Science, Technology and Innovation as the financing agent of the General State Administration for business R&D&I. Its sources of financing come from its own funds (General State Budget, loan repayments, etc.), although it is also co-financed with Structural and Investment Funds and with funds from the European Investment Bank (EIB). It also promotes the participation of Spanish entities in international technological cooperation programs or in technological tenders for space programs or large scientific facilities.
Novadays will act as an independent evaluator between 2018 and 2020 of the impacts of these programs/instruments, which finance about 1,000 R&D projects (about 850 companies per year, of which 60% are SMEs) and with an expected annual budget amounting to €800 million (€100 million from the ESI Funds). Partially repayable aid is the main instrument of the CDTI R&D aid scheme (85-90% of the annual budget) and it also grants aid in the form of direct subsidies representing between 10% and 15% of the scheme's annual budget.
The impact evaluation of the CDTI's R&D project aid scheme (2015-2020) is carried out in accordance with the Evaluation Plan authorized by the European Commission through Decision C (2015) 4147 final, dated June 22, 2015.
The evaluation follows the requirements of the DG Competition of the European Commission, deploying a set of quantitative and qualitative techniques unprecedented in this type of studies in Spain. Novadays' methodological offer obtained an advantage of 10 points (out of 40) to the second best evaluated.
The evaluation of State aid is an essential learning tool for confirming prior hypotheses in policy design and is a key tool for helping to improve future aid programs. This learning is undoubtedly shared by all member countries, as it will enable them to share increasingly refined experiences and practices in the medium and long term and to make all public aid applied to R&D more transparent.
The CDTI finances business R&D&I through four types of instruments:
The evaluation of the current CDTI aid scheme (2015-2020), subject to the General Block Exemption Regulation (SA.45828), only applies to partially reimbursable aid and grants awarded to R&D projects: CIEN Program, individual and collaborative R&D projects, ERDF Innterconecta, Innoglobal, International inter-company projects -Eurostars- and Eranets projects.