The European Investment Bank has decided to channel most of its institutional relations with universities through an EIB - Universities Research Action.

The European Investment Bank has decided to channel most of its institutional relations with universities through an EIB — Universities Research Action consisting of three different programmes:

• EIBURS, the EIB University Research Sponsorship Programme, which will provide grants to university research centres working on research topics and themes of major interest to the Bank. EIB sponsorships of up to EUR 100,000 per year for a period of three years, will be awarded through a competitive process to interested university departments or research centres associated with universities in EU, accession or acceding countries, with recognised expertise in areas of direct interest to the Bank, enabling them to expand their activities in these areas.
• STAREBEI (STAges de REcherche BEI), a programme for financing young researchers working on joint EIB-university projects. The STAREBEI Programme supports the joint interests of university centres and EIB staff through the provision of traineeships to junior researchers interested in carrying out research projects proposed by the Bank under the joint supervision of a university tutor and an EIB tutor.
• EIB University Networks, a sponsoring mechanism for university networks showing characteristics that are of particular relevance to supporting the objectives of the EIB Group. These networks should be cooperative associations for educational, research and development activities with a specific purpose. They will be used by the EIB as preferred vehicles for publicising the other two programmes and providing information about other research requests from the Bank's services. Where appropriate, these networks will be entitled to use the ‘EIB label’ in their promotion.

The Community provisional funding available for the programme is:

• 0,10 Million EUR (Annual budget for 2006)
• 0,10 Million EUR (Annual budget for 2008)