Funding Structures

2004 has gone down as a year of major structural reform in Austrian research funding. The establishment of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) as a result of the merger of four funding and consulting institutions marked a break with the previous funding structures, which had been dominated since the 1960s by the two funding agencies FFF (Austrian Industrial Research Promotion Fund) and FWF (Austrian Science Fund). The steering structures of the FWF were also reformed, and the National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development was established as a new instrument of research financing.

The FFG has brought a greater degree of order into the funding landscape, which in the past has frequently been criticised for its complexity and fragmentation. This institution is also creating synergies by bundling the rich tradition of bottom-up funding with programmes that set thematic priorities and optimise the co-operation structures within the innovation system. It now concentrates a highly diversified funding portfolio under a single roof: from funding upon application to support for the networking activities of small and medium-sized companies, from the competence centres to the university spin-off programme AplusB, from thematic programmes such as the NANO Initiative or the Impulse programmes on sustainability or traffic technologies, to consulting services regarding participation in European and international research programmes and co-operations.

The FFG thus forms a triumvirate of research and technology promotion together with the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), and the Austria Wirtschaftservice Gesellschaft (AWS) founded two years earlier. The FWF is the biggest financier of basic research beside the universities, while the FFG focuses upon application-oriented research. This new clarity in research funding will become evident in June 2006 when the FFG and FWF move into the new House of Research together with the Christian Doppler Research Association and Austrian Cooperative Research. As the service centre for enterprise-related business promotion, the AWS is, among other things, responsible for the life sciences start-up programme LISA and the patent exploitation programme uni:invent.

The National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development was established as an instrument of sustainable research financing with a focus on supporting long-term, interdisciplinary research programmes. Since 2004 it has distributed EUR 25 million annually. The Foundation is financed from interest income from the capital of the Austrian National Bank and the ERP Fund dedicated for this purpose.