Functions

The CDTI, E.P.E., is a Public Business Entity within the Ministry of Science and Innovation, which promotes the innovation and technological development of Spanish companies. It is the entity that channels applications for aid and support for Spanish companies' R&D projects at a national and international level. Thus, the objective of the CDTI is to contribute towards improving Spanish companies' levels of technology through the development of the following activities:

• Technical-economic evaluation and granting of public aid for innovation through subsidies or partially repayable grants for R&D projects undertaken by companies.
• Managing and promoting Spanish participation in international technological cooperation programmes.
• Promoting international business technology transfer and technology innovation support services.
• Supporting the creation and consolidation of technology-based companies.

The majority of the CDTI infrastructure is located in Madrid, although it also offers Spanish companies a strategic network of offices or representatives abroad (Japan – SBTO (Spain Business and Technology Office); Belgium – SOST (Spain Office of Science and Technology) and Permanent Secretariat of Eureka; Brazil – FINEP (Studies and Projects Financing Body); Korea; Chile; Morocco; China; India; Mexico; and the USA) to support them in their international technological activities.

CDTI Functions

The CDTI is governed by private law in its relations with third parties. This allows it to offer companies agility and flexibility in its support services for the development of R&D business projects, the international operation of technologies developed by the company and the provision of offers for technological-industrial supplies to scientific and technological organisations.

Consequently, the CDTI grants the company its own financial support and facilitates access to third-party financial support (e.g. grants from the EU R&D Framework Programme) to run national and international research and development projects.

It also supports the company's development in international cooperation, offering aid for innovation and technology transfer projects, its foreign network and the multilateral (Eureka and Iberoeka) and bilateral cooperation projects with Canada, Japan, China, South Korea, India and South Africa.

The CDTI has also been established as the appropriate body to issue binding reasoned reports on the projects to which it has granted aid under any of its allocations (Royal Decree 2/2007). These documents will provide the Spanish companies which have an approved project and public aid granted by the CDTI with greater legal certainty when it comes to obtaining tax deductions for the expenses incurred in the R&D activities of such projects.  

Finally, the CDTI manages and supports Spanish companies in obtaining high-tech industrial contracts generated by different national and European organisations, such as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), the European Synchrotron (ESRF) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO), among others.