The European Defence Fund (EDF) is the Commission’s initiative to support collaborative defence research and development, and to foster an innovative and competitive defence industrial base.

Human-AI dialogue systems offer impressive results but are still prone to errors of various types. Moreover, there is no established metric to measure system performances. In order to ensure trustworthiness and steer progress, these systems should be submitted to common tests using shared data and clear metrics and protocols.

The goal of this call topic is thus to set up a testing environment and organise a technological challenge to evaluate the performances of such systems for defence use cases, including their abilities to manage classified information and to justify their answers. The challenge should be open to research teams supported through another call topic (EDF-2025-LS-RA-CHALLENGE-DIGIT-HAIDP) and possibly by other sources of funding. Representative defence users should be involved to contribute to the definition of the use cases and associated data, to test the demonstrators produced by the participating teams, and to provide feedback.

• Justice - Security
• Research, Technological Development and Innovation

• Businesses
• Legal Entities
• Other Beneficiaries
• Private Bodies
• Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions

In order to be eligible, all applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must cumulatively:

• be legal entities (public or private bodies)
• be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
  • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs)
  • non-EU countries:
    • listed EEA countries (‘EDF associated countries’; list of participating countries)
• have their executive management structure established in eligible countries
• not be subject to control by a non-associated third country or non-associated third-country entity (unless they can provide guarantees – see Annex 2 – approved by the Member State or EDF associated country where they are established).

Consortium composition – Proposals must be submitted by: minimum 3 independent applicants (beneficiaries; not affiliated entities) from 3 different eligible countries.

Ministry of Defense

Address: 172-174 Strovolos Avenue, 2048 Strovolos, Nicosia
Telephone: 22 807500
Email: defence@mod.gov.cy
Website: https://mod.gov.cy/

Department of Research and Innovation
Telephones: 22 807755, 22 807754
Email: research.innovation@mod.gov.cy

For help related to this call, please contact: DEFIS-EDF-PROPOSALS@ec.europa.eu

• Funding&Tenders
• Call document