As one of those reviewers I beg to differ on the non-understanding part :).
You have to understand that the reviews happen in context. What isn't always understood by the layman is that countries/regions etc. aren't reluctant to grant subsidies, but actually want to subsidize as much as they can get away with.
The break on the system is international treaties of mutually agreed limits on what you are allowed to subsidize. But the agreed budget will be spent.
The distribution strategy and selectivity are often set by the political factions that hold the office at the time, and the administration is bound by the strategy laid out.
This can vary from being realy critical and looking for true R&D high potential high-risk/high potential risk taking, to lowering the bar and just give everyone a little bit of the budget with few questions asked.
Reviewers are always allowed to be very honest in their assessments, and have more than enough experience in seeing through all the shady hand-waving. They also usually look into the potential of the company/team beyond the strict letter of funding proposal dossier as submitted. How the expert advise is taken into account in a funding decision is up to the administration. The reviewer is paid for the review, and is not even informed of the final decisions.
It sounds like we are talking about different things: this was in the form of R&D tax rebates, and all due respect, the reviewers involved asked for more and more "plain english" descriptions of the technology to the point of meaningless.
Ah! My review experience is in direct innovation project grants.
I have been on the defending (receiving) side of the R&D tax rebates. As far as I could tell, these types of negotiations are done by people from the finance and economy, not the innovation and R&D administration. This is also the domain of professional intermediaries from the Big-5 offering this as a service. If you were there as the token 'techie' (I know i was), your unspoken role would typically have been to spew jargon and tech details, of which neither your financial consultants nor the administration representative would understand one word. They weren't looking for technical insights, just judging in how-far the activities and people you are claiming the rebates for differ from your 'normal' activities and employee pool, so they can draw a line somewhere.
You have to understand that the reviews happen in context. What isn't always understood by the layman is that countries/regions etc. aren't reluctant to grant subsidies, but actually want to subsidize as much as they can get away with.
The break on the system is international treaties of mutually agreed limits on what you are allowed to subsidize. But the agreed budget will be spent.
The distribution strategy and selectivity are often set by the political factions that hold the office at the time, and the administration is bound by the strategy laid out.
This can vary from being realy critical and looking for true R&D high potential high-risk/high potential risk taking, to lowering the bar and just give everyone a little bit of the budget with few questions asked.
Reviewers are always allowed to be very honest in their assessments, and have more than enough experience in seeing through all the shady hand-waving. They also usually look into the potential of the company/team beyond the strict letter of funding proposal dossier as submitted. How the expert advise is taken into account in a funding decision is up to the administration. The reviewer is paid for the review, and is not even informed of the final decisions.