Incentive effect and combination of policy instruments

If you are thinking of combining support for research and innovation projects with SkatteFUNN support, there are two things you need to be aware of:

1. There are restrictions on the proportion of funding a research and development project (R&D project) can receive from the public sector. You can read more about that here.
2. It is important to apply for the various support schemes in the right order.

Apply for support before the project starts, and then SkatteFUNN

There is an incentive effect requirement for grant schemes in accordance with the state aid rules. This applies to grant schemes for research and development to companies from, among others, the Research Council of Norway, Regional Research Funds and Innovation Norway. There is not the same requirement for incentive effect for SkatteFUNN.

The incentive effect requirement means that the SkatteFUNN project cannot have been started when you apply for other grants for the same R&D project. This means that you cannot receive other support for the project if you have started work on the SkatteFUNN project before an application for other support has been submitted. Therefore, apply for a grant first, and possibly SkatteFUNN later, if there is room for it within the framework of the maximum permitted state aid for the individual project. If it is not possible to wait with the SkatteFUNN application until another grant application has been submitted, you must make sure that the date for the start of the SkatteFUNN project is after the deadline for submitting another grant application. If the date for the start of the SkatteFUNN project is set before the deadline for another grant application, or the date for submission of another grant application, the SkatteFUNN project will appear to have started when the grant is to be assessed. The incentive effect requirement is therefore not met.

We recommend using the same objectives, work packages and project period in the different instruments with regard to project follow-up.

Definition of R&D project from ESA's guidelines for state aid for research, development and innovation

'R&D project' means an operation that includes activities spanning over one or several categories of research and development defined in these guidelines, and that is intended to accomplish an indivisible task of a precise economic, scientific or technical nature with clearly pre-defined goals. A R&D project may consist of several work packages, activities or services, and includes clear objectives, activities to be carried out to achieve those objectives (including their expected costs), and concrete deliverables to identify the outcomes of those activities and compare them with the relevant objectives. When two or more R&D projects are not clearly separable from each other and in particular when they do not have independent probabilities of technological success, they are considered as a single project.

Link to ESA's guidelines

See also Conditions for the allocation of state aid for more information on the state support rules, and the Research Council's ability to award project funding to undertakings.