Increase in research expenditures

© Julius Silver

“We are endowing the National Foundation with more funds than ever before. We will invest a total of EUR 420 million in our excellent research landscape by 2020. These funds will make an important contribution to our efforts to further push ahead in the group of innovation leaders”, said Harald Mahrer, Federal Minister of Science, Research and Economy, on the occasion of an amendment to the FTE National Foundation Act approved by the Council of Ministers.

Each year about EUR 140 million will be distributed via the National Foundation. This amount consists of financial resources made available by the National Bank, the Austria Fund (Österreichfond) and interest from the ERP Fund.

In particular, new types of research and innovation funding will be financed by the National Foundation. “Innovation and creativity are the keys to our competitiveness. For this reason, we have to targetedly promote the best minds and tread new paths in research promotion. In this way, we provide crucial impetus to press ahead with competitive research”, Minister Mahrer added. Applications can be submitted via the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), Austria Wirtschaftsservice (aws), the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), the Ludwig Boltzmann Society (LBG) and the Christian Doppler Research Association (CDG).