Legal basis and policies

Consolidated Act on Innovation Fund Denmark (Retsinformation)

Executive Order on the grant function, etc. under Innovation Fund Denmark (Retsinformation)

Agreement on adjusting the legal basis for Innovation Fund Denmark (Retsinformation)

Act amending the Act on Innovation Fund Denmark (1 Jan 2025, Retsinformation)
At Innovation Fund Denmark, protecting personal data is essential, and we process your personal data in accordance with applicable legislation.

Privacy policy for Innovation Fund Denmark
The public funds in Denmark seek to ensure unrestricted and free digital access for everyone to publicly funded research results.

Open access policy [PDF]
Innovation Fund Denmark’s whistleblower scheme enables employees and others affiliated with the Fund to report any illegal, unethical or irresponsible conduct that conflicts with the Fund’s rules and values. All reports are sent directly to the Fund’s legal counsel, the Danish Government Attorney (Kammeradvokaten).

Read more and report here.

You can also read more in the whistleblower policy, the personal data policy for the whistleblower scheme or the guidance for whistleblowers

Annual publication of information on Innovation Fund Denmark’s whistleblower scheme

Under the Act on the protection of whistleblowers, Innovation Fund Denmark must inform the public at least once a year about the general activity in the Fund’s whistleblower scheme.

Read the annual publication below.

Annual publication of information on Innovation Fund Denmark’s whistleblower scheme 2025 [PDF]

Annual publication of information on Innovation Fund Denmark’s whistleblower scheme 2024 [PDF]

Annual publication of information on Innovation Fund Denmark’s whistleblower scheme 2023 [PDF]
Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) at Innovation Fund Denmark.

RRI aims to create better alignment between research and innovation processes and results and society’s values and needs.

Innovation Fund Denmark promotes RRI both through the Fund’s overall strategies and through our projects, and we follow the European Commission’s definition and implementation of RRI.

We have designed our investment types and assessment criteria to encourage projects to focus on ‘societal engagement’ and ‘researcher education’. Projects are therefore directly encouraged to:
- Involve all relevant stakeholders and institutions in the research and innovation process
- Develop a strong focus on future users
- Engage in formal and informal cross-institutional researcher education
By engaging all relevant stakeholders in the research and innovation process, project results may potentially become more sustainable and long-term. And by making formal and informal researcher education an integral part of the projects, they will not only lead to research and innovation results, but also to the education of the next generation of researchers.
Here you can read Innovation Fund Denmark’s conflict-of-interest rules, adopted by the Board of Directors on 21 June 2023. They entered into force on 28 June 2023 and replaced the Fund’s previous conflict-of-interest rules.

The Board of Directors’ conflict-of-interest analysis [PDF]

Conflict-of-interest rules [PDF]
Innovation Fund Denmark was established to create growth and employment and to find solutions to society’s challenges. To document the value generated by the Fund’s investments, the Fund has developed a framework tool that can help identify project results and success.

Innovation Fund Denmark’s impact framework provides the basis for answering questions such as: How successful are Innovation Fund Denmark (IFD) investments? Which projects should the Fund invest in? And how do we attract the right applicants? These questions can be addressed through targeted data collection and well-designed analyses.

At the same time, the framework tool helps make it possible to target data collection, visualisation and analysis so that Innovation Fund Denmark’s societal impact—and the path to achieving it—can be made visible.

Innovation Fund Denmark’s impact framework (DK) [PDF]
Here you can read Innovation Fund Denmark’s communications policy, which provides a shared overarching framework for the Fund’s communications. The communications policy was adopted in November 2021.

Communications policy [PDF]
Here you can read Innovation Fund Denmark’s Gender Equality Plan.

Gender Equality Plan [PDF]
Policy on offensive behaviour [PDF]

Complaints about decisions made by Innovation Fund Denmark cannot be brought before another administrative authority, cf. section 23(1) of Consolidated Act no. 156 of 13 February 2025 on Innovation Fund Denmark (hereinafter referred to as the Act). However, pursuant to section 23(2) of the Act, legal matters in connection with the Fund’s decisions as a grant-awarding authority may be appealed to the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science, cf. Executive Order no. 1118 of 28/10/2024 on delegation of the Minister for Higher Education and Science’s powers to the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science, cf. section 14, no. 5.

A complaint regarding legal matters must be submitted in writing to Innovation Fund Denmark, Kalkværksvej 16, 7, 8000 Aarhus C, either by letter or by email to kontakt@innofond.dk, within 4 weeks after the decision has been notified to the parties to the case, cf. section 25 of the Act. If the Fund decides to uphold the decision, it must forward the complaint, the case documents and the Fund’s statement on the case to the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science without undue delay. In that connection, you will receive a notification that the complaint has been forwarded.

In the event of a complaint, three scenarios may arise in the handling of the complaint:
- First, Innovation Fund Denmark may choose not to reopen the case. In this case, the Fund must forward the case to the Minister for Higher Education and Science, via the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science, without undue delay after receiving the complaint.
- Second, the Fund may choose to reopen the case and make a new decision that fully upholds the party’s claim. In this case, no further action is required.
- Third, the Fund may choose to reopen the case and make a new decision that (still) does not fully uphold the party’s claim. In this case, the party may choose to appeal the new decision. In these situations, the complaint must again be submitted in writing to the Fund within 4 weeks after the decision has been notified to the person concerned.
This guidance has been prepared for members of Innovation Fund Denmark’s professional committees with the purpose of explaining how, as a committee member, you can be reimbursed for travel expenses incurred in connection with committee work.

Read the guidance here.

Travel rules for committee work at Innovation Fund Denmark – Dec 2024 [PDF]

On 25 June 2026, the Board of Directors of Innovation Fund Denmark adopted an update to the guidelines for the Fund’s research advisory services. The new guidelines will apply to allocations not yet approved, while the guidelines adopted on 8 April 2025 will apply to the allocations that Innovation Fund Denmark has approved up to 31 Dec 2026.

If you have questions about the Fund’s research advisory services, please contact:

Program Officer Monica Milter Ehlers. Tel. +45 61905067 and email: moncia.milter.ehlers@innofond.dk

Guidelines for ministerial research advice [PDF]
Danish and foreign intelligence indicates that international research collaboration can have serious security, economic and ethical consequences. A report and specific guidelines for Danish higher education and research institutions emphasise that publicly funded research-financing foundations have a special responsibility to continuously assess potential risks associated with the activities they fund.

In practice, this means that the foundations have an obligation to remain vigilant and actively request more information from relevant institutions or authorities if borderline cases arise concerning international researchers and companies applying for and receiving Danish funding.

The new guidelines were published in May 2022, and they were developed after the Committee on Guidelines for International Research and Innovation Collaboration (URIS) reported on how best to safeguard Danish research against economic, security and ethical risks in international research and innovation collaboration.

Innovation Fund Denmark is implementing the URIS recommendations in the guidelines for all relevant Fund programmes. This will have been completed once the 2023 research reserve negotiations have concluded and all guidelines have been updated for 2023.

You can find the URIS guidelines here.

You can find the URIS guidelines here.

In collaboration with the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science and the Danish Business Authority, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) has prepared a number of recommendations for people working at research institutions and in research-intensive companies to prevent and address espionage.

You can find the recommendations in the booklet Is your research at risk?

The booklet is an update of a similar booklet from 2021.

The booklet supplements the report from the Committee on Guidelines for International Research and Innovation Collaboration (URIS), which presented its findings in 2022.

Legal basis and policies

Legal basis and policies

Welcome to our new website