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Definitions For the purposes of this Regulation, the following definitions apply:

(1) ‘legal entity’ means a legal person created and recognised as such under Union, national or international law, which has legal personality and the capacity to act in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity which does not have legal personality as referred to in point (c) of Article 197(2) of the Financial Regulation;

(2) ‘applicant’ means a legal entity that submits an application for support from the Fund after a call for proposals or in accordance with point (e) of the first paragraph of Article 195 of the Financial Regulation;

(3) ‘recipient’ means a legal entity with which a funding or financing agreement has been signed or to which a funding or financing decision has been notified;

(4) ‘consortium’ means a collaborative grouping of applicants or recipients that is subject to an agreement and constituted for the purpose of carrying out an action under the Fund;

(5) ‘coordinator’ means a legal entity which is a member of a consortium and has been appointed by all the members of the consortium to be the principal point of contact for the purpose of the consortium’s relations with the Commission;

(6) ‘control’ means the ability to exercise a decisive influence on a legal entity directly, or indirectly through one or more intermediate legal entities;

(7) ‘executive management structure’ means a body of a legal entity, appointed in accordance with national law, and, where applicable, reporting to the chief executive officer, which is empowered to establish the legal entity’s strategy, objectives and overall direction, and which oversees and monitors management decision-making;

(8) ‘system prototype’ means a model of a product or technology that can demonstrate performance in an operational environment;

(9) ‘qualification’ means the entire process of demonstrating that the design of a defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology meets the specified requirements, providing objective evidence by which particular requirements of a design are demonstrated to have been met;

(10) ‘certification’ means the process by which a national authority certifies that the defence product, tangible or intangible component or technology complies with the applicable regulations;

(11) ‘research action’ means an action consisting primarily of research activities, in particular applied research and where necessary fundamental research, with the aim of acquiring new knowledge and with an exclusive focus on defence applications;

(12) ‘development action’ means an action consisting of defence-oriented activities primarily in the development phase, covering new defence products or technologies or the upgrading of existing ones, excluding the production or use of weapons;

(13) ‘disruptive technology for defence’ means an enhanced or completely new technology that brings about a radical change, including a paradigm shift in the concept and conduct of defence affairs such as by replacing existing defence technologies or rendering them obsolete;

(14) ‘small and medium-sized enterprises’ or ‘SMEs’ means small and medium-sized enterprises as defined in Article 2 of the Annex to Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC ();

(15) ‘middle capitalisation company’ or ‘mid-cap’ means an enterprise that is not a SME and that employs a maximum of 3 000 persons, where the headcount of staff is calculated in accordance with Articles 3 to 6 of the Annex to Recommendation 2003/361/EC;

(16) ‘blending operation’ means an action supported by the Union budget, including within a blending facility or platform as defined in point (6) of Article 2 of the Financial Regulation, that combines non-repayable forms of support or financial instruments from the Union budget with repayable forms of support from development or other public finance institutions as well as from commercial finance institutions and investors;

(17) ‘pre-commercial procurement’ means the procurement of research and development services involving risk-benefit sharing under market conditions, and competitive development in phases, where there is a clear separation of the research and development services procured from the deployment of commercial volumes of end-products;

(18) ‘project manager’ means a contracting authority established in a Member State or an associated country, appointed by a Member State or an associated country or a group of Member States or associated countries to manage multinational armament projects on an on-going or ad-hoc basis;

(19) ‘results’ means any tangible or intangible effect of a given action, such as data, knowhow or information, whatever its form or nature and whether or not it can be protected, as well as any rights attached to it, including IPRs;

(20) ‘foreground information’ means data, knowhow or information generated in the operation of the Fund, whatever its form or nature;

(21) ‘classified information’ means information or material, in any form, the unauthorised disclosure of which could cause varying degrees of prejudice to the interests of the Union, or of one or more of the Member States, and which bears an EU classification marking or a corresponding classification marking, as established in the Agreement between the Member States of the European Union, meeting within the Council, regarding the protection of classified information exchanged in the interests of the European Union ();

(22) ‘sensitive information’ means information and data, including classified information, that is to be protected from unauthorised access or disclosure because of obligations laid down in Union or national law or in order to safeguard the privacy or security of a natural or legal person;

(23) ‘special report’ means a specific deliverable of a research action summarising its results, providing extensive information on the basic principles, the aims, the outcomes, the basic properties, the tests performed, the potential benefits, the potential defence applications and the expected exploitation path of the research towards development, including information on the ownership of IPRs but not requiring the inclusion of IPR information;

(24) ‘non-associated third-country entity’ means a legal entity that is established in a non-associated third country or, where it is established in the Union or in an associated country, that has its executive management structures in a non-associated third country.