1. Aid for research and development projects shall be compatible with the internal market within the meaning of Article 107(3) of the Treaty and shall be exempted from the notification requirement of Article 108(3) of the Treaty provided that the conditions laid down in this Article and in Chapter I are fulfilled.
2. The aided part of the research and development project shall completely fall within one or more of the following categories:
(a)
fundamental research;
(b)
industrial research;
(c)
experimental development;
(d)
feasibility studies.
3. The eligible costs of research and development projects shall be allocated to a specific category of research and development and shall be the following:
(a)
personnel costs: researchers, technicians and other supporting staff to the extent employed on the project;
(b)
costs of instruments and equipment to the extent and for the period used for the project. Where such instruments and equipment are not used for their full life for the project, only the depreciation costs corresponding to the life of the project, as calculated on the basis of generally accepted accounting principles are considered as eligible.
(c)
Costs for of buildings and land, to the extent and for the duration period used for the project. With regard to buildings, only the depreciation costs corresponding to the life of the project, as calculated on the basis of generally accepted accounting principles are considered as eligible. For land, costs of commercial transfer or actually incurred capital costs are eligible.
(d)
costs of contractual research, knowledge and patents bought or licensed from outside sources at arm's length conditions, as well as costs of consultancy and equivalent services used exclusively for the project;
(e)
additional overheads and other operating expenses, including costs of materials, supplies and similar products, incurred directly as a result of the project;
4. The eligible costs for feasibility studies shall be the costs of the study.
5. The aid intensity for each beneficiary shall not exceed:
(a)
100 % of the eligible costs for fundamental research;
(b)
50 % of the eligible costs for industrial research;
(c)
25 % of the eligible costs for experimental development;
(d)
50 % of the eligible costs for feasibility studies.
6. The aid intensities for industrial research and experimental development may be increased up to a maximum aid intensity of 80 % of the eligible costs as follows:
(a)
by 10 percentage points for medium-sized enterprises and by 20 percentage points for small enterprises;
(b)
by 15 percentage points if one of the following conditions is fulfilled:
(i)
the project involves effective collaboration:
—
between undertakings among which at least one is an SME, or is carried out in at least two Member States, or in a Member State and in a Contracting Party of the EEA Agreement, and no single undertaking bears more than 70 % of the eligible costs, or
—
between an undertaking and one or more research and knowledge-dissemination organisations, where the latter bear at least 10 % of the eligible costs and have the right to publish their own research results;
(ii)
the results of the project are widely disseminated through conferences, publication, open access repositories, or free or open source software.
7. The aid intensities for feasibility studies may be increased by 10 percentage points for medium-sized enterprises and by 20 percentage points for small enterprises;