EIBURS provides 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, are awarded through a competitive process to interested University Departments or Research Centres, associated with Universities of EU, Accession or Acceding Countries. Call is open until September 10th 2010.

The European Investment Bank channels 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.
• STAREBEI (STAges de REcherche BEI), a programme for financing young researchers working on joint EIB-University projects.
• IB University Networks, a cooperation mechanism for university networks showing characteristics that are of particular relevance to supporting the objectives of the EIB Group.

For the academic year 2010/2011, the EIBURS programme has selected three new lines of research which are detailed in the Call for Proposals EIBURS that has been issued in the Official Journal of the EU of 1 June 2010.

1. Benchmarking European SME Credit Performance

The project may involve any additional activity that the University Centre would be ready to undertake with the sponsorship in the line of research, including:

• Organisation of courses and seminars
• Creation of additional databases
• Surveys.

2. The History of European Infrastructure Finance

In this context, the EIB invites research proposals which seek to:

• Explore the longer term macro trends in infrastructure finance, the outcomes in terms of sustainable public service improvements, and their relevance to contemporary policy debates
• Develop case studies of technological and financial innovation in specific infrastructure projects and sectors, particularly those of a pan-European nature
• Catalogue and analyse the history of different public, private and mixed financing schemes for infrastructure construction and operation across different sectors and within different legal and national policy frameworks.

3. The Economic Impact of Law: An Economic Assessment of the Impact of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive

The research should target a representative sample of EU Member States.

The project may involve any additional activity that the University Centre would be ready to undertake with the sponsorship in the line of research, including:

• Organisation of courses and seminar
• Creation of databases
• Surveys

The deadline for presentation of proposals is 10 September 2010. They should be submitted at: universities@eib.org
and Hard copy:

EIB-Universities Research Action
100, boulevard Konrad Adenauer
2950 Luxembourg
LUXEMBOURG