Luxembourg National Research Fund

In 2021, Quebec and Luxembourg signed three agreements in the research and innovation sectors to forge closer links between their respective societies. A first call for projects has therefore been launched to increase exchanges between different players in civil society. Deadline to apply is 10 December 2023.

Objectives

The objectives of this call for projects are as follows:

• To encourage cooperation between research centres and researchers in targeted areas of interest to both parties;
• To promote better mutual understanding by consolidating networks and sharing expertise.

Project-related

To be eligible, a project must :

• be bilateral, i.e. it must include at least one partner from Quebec and one beneficiary eligible for the FNR for Luxembourg;
• produce tangible spin-offs that are mutually beneficial for the Quebec and Luxembourg partners;
• be the subject of a request for financial support not exceeding two years and for a maximum amount of CA$10,000 for the Quebec partner and €10,000 for the Luxembourg partner;
• be submitted in full at the time of application;
• be submitted before the application deadline.
• Ineligible projects: International solidarity projects, projects of an individual nature (not supported by an institution of either party) or unilateral projects are not eligible.

Applicant requirements

To be eligible, Québec applicants must :

• be a legal entity with its head office in Quebec, legally constituted and registered, and not in default under the laws governing it;
• be an educational institution, cooperative, research, innovation and technology transfer centre, business or organization.

To be eligible, applicants from Luxembourg must :

• be a researcher (level R2 to R4) affiliated to an eligible institution and be employed as a researcher by his/her home institution before, during and after the visit;
• be affiliated to an organisation eligible to receive funding from the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR);
• comply with the principal investigator (PI) rules of the Fonds national de recherche du Luxembourg: cf FNR requirements for principal investigators and supervisors;
• submit a copy of the application, following the INTER This hyperlink will open in a new window. programme, to the Fonds national de recherche du Luxembourg, via the AIMS. This hyperlink will open in a new window. platform, within seven days of the application being submitted to Quebec.

Funding guidelines

The grant requested for a successful project may not exceed CA$10,000, i.e. $5,000 per year.

The Québec government’s financial commitment, subject to the prerogatives of the National Assembly regarding the adoption of annual appropriations, covers one or two fiscal years beginning on March 31, 2023 and ending on April 1, 2025.

Financial support will be granted exclusively to the project’s Quebec partner.

The organisations whose projects are selected undertake to produce a financial and narrative report on the project funded, setting out in particular the expected spin-offs.

Eligible and non-eligible expenses
Eligible expenses are as follows for Quebec :

• international travel, accommodation and subsistence costs, up to a maximum of $2,500 per mission, per person (lump sum);
• costs of organising webinars, recording, translating or broadcasting video clips or online courses, up to a maximum of $2,000;
• costs of organising events (premises, equipment or materials), up to a maximum of $2,000;
• costs of promotion, publications, translation or communication, up to a maximum of $2,000;
• registration fees for a conference or event, up to a maximum of $500.

Ineligible expenses for Quebec are as follows

• expenses incurred before the support has been officially announced;
• any expense relating to an organization’s ongoing funding and staff remuneration;
• any expense that has already received support from another government programme for the same expense;
• first or business class travel costs and excess baggage charges.
• The project must have access to other sources of funding to supplement the budget items not covered by the current call for projects. Particular attention will be paid to the diversity of funding sources and the justification of the amount requested when assessing projects.

Eligible expenses for the FNR are €10,000 (for a maximum of 24 months).

The FNR financially supports the secondment of a researcher without family by funding the costs associated with research stays. The following expenses are eligible under the FNR’s financial regulations:

• travel expenses: international transport, accommodation and subsistence;
• costs of organising webinars, recording, translating or broadcasting video clips or online courses;
• costs of organising events (premises, equipment or materials).
• In duly justified cases, it is possible to request reimbursement of other expenses, for example for visas, supplementary health insurance or childcare.

Evaluation criteria

Submitted projects will be evaluated by Québec according to the following three criteria:

• The relevance of the joint project: objectives, context and issues;
• Complementarity of the partnership, including the specific contribution of the partners (technologies, expertise);
• The spin-offs and future development of the project for the target sector, for Quebec and for Luxembourg.

The project evaluation process is coordinated by the Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie and the Délégation générale du Québec à Bruxelles, in close collaboration with the Quebec sector ministries concerned. Information submitted under this call for projects may therefore be shared with these ministries. However, the Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie remains responsible for the final selection of projects and for determining the amounts to be awarded to them.

Luxembourg, in agreement with its Ministry of Education and Research, through the FNR, transposes the funding decision for Luxembourg partners according to the funding recommendations.