Information for Researchers, No. 88 | October 18, 2021

New Edition of the French-German Collaboration for Proposals in the Natural, Life and Engineering Sciences (ANR-DFG 2022 NLE)

The French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; German Research Foundation) are continuing their annual collaboration for French-German projects in the Natural, Life and Engineering Sciences.

This is based on an agreement signed by both agencies in 2018, establishing joint French-German projects as a standard offer within the DFG’s research grants programme.

For the 2022 edition of this call, DFG will act as the lead agency, i.e., joint (full) proposals describing the bilateral projects as a whole have to be submitted firstly to DFG, which will be responsible for processing them and conducting the review process. The ANR will require a copy of the documents to be submitted on its dedicated web portal. Note that there is no pre-proposal stage on either side.

Submission of (full) proposals for joint bilateral research projects – with exception of space technology, nuclear research and defense – is possible electronically via DFG’s elan portal starting 13 November 2021 and at latest on 11 January 2022 (until midnight). In order to submit, all applicants on the German side need an active account on elan with up-to-date contact information. If this is not the case, please set up or update your account as early as possible, at latest on 6 January 2022.

The corresponding submission to ANR, using the same acronym and identical proposal documents, is required before 12 January 2022 at 5 p.m. on ANR’s submission website, where administrative and financial data relevant for the ANR have to be entered. Please refer to ANR’s website for details, notably to the generic call for proposals 2022 page and the specific ANR-DFG annex.

Please note that proposals in the social sciences and humanities must be submitted in the dedicated ANR-DFG call in social sciences and humanities (with separate deadlines). This also applies to transdisciplinary projects when the proposed research approach mainly centres on these fields, and/or when the principal investigator is from the social sciences/humanities.

Please be aware that:

  • DFG’s dedicated webpage for this call provides more ample information with regular updates.
  • In particular, there you find a template for these joint proposals, which are to be written in English.
  • The respective eligibility rules of ANR and DFG apply to the applicants of a joint proposal.
  • Commercial partners cannot be involved in joint ANR-DFG projects.
  • The duration of the projects can be up to three years.
  • Decisions can be expected in October 2022. Funding will start with the beginning of 2023.

The results of the 2021 edition are also available through the DFG’s dedicated webpage.

Further information

For further information from the DFG concerning eligibility criteria, the submission process, contacts and status updates please refer to:

Information concerning ANR’s rules and procedures is available at:

Please note that the information regarding pre-proposals does not apply here.

Please also note the DFG’s data protection notice on research funding, which can be viewed and downloaded at:

If necessary, please also forward this information to those persons whose data the DFG processes because they are involved in your project.