HORIZON 2020 – WORK PROGRAMME 2018-2020
General Annexes
Part 19 - Page 12 of 37
‘Sole participants’
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may be eligible if the above-mentioned specific conditions for eligible
ERA-NET Cofund partners are satisfied. A sole participant forming a sole legal entity must
explicitly indicate which of its 'members' are either programme owners or programme
managers in the proposed action, and indicate for these members the respective
national/regional programmes which are at the disposal of the proposed ERA-NET Cofund
action.
Funding rate: The EU contribution will be limited to a maximum of 33% of the total eligible
costs of the action. The EU contribution to the costs for support to or implementation of trans-
national projects is limited to one call per grant agreement.
Other information: In accordance with the H2020 Rules for Participation Regulation No
1290/2013, Article 137(1)(c) of the Financial Regulation No 966/2012 and Article 210a of the
Rules of Application Regulation No 1268/2012, do not apply to financial support provided
by the participants in the ERA-NET Cofund actions (since this financial support is the
primary aim of the action and necessary to achieve its objectives).
The contributions of (other) national or regional programmes which are not part of the
consortium to the costs of trans-national projects cannot be considered for the calculation of
the EU contribution.
No costs are eligible for activities related to the preparation, implementation and follow-up of
the co-funded call. The consortium may however choose to use part of the EU contribution to
support their activities as long as the corresponding costs are not declared as eligible and the
EU contribution does not exceed 33% of partners' funding of trans-national projects and unit
costs for additional activities. This means in practice that they have to replace any EU
contribution that is used to support their activities with additional national contributions to the
funding of trans-national projects.
The total EU contribution to the costs of providing support to or implementation of trans-
national projects is calculated as a percentage of their total eligible cost. Therefore, if the
actual eligible costs for support to trans-national projects are lower than the original amount
defined in the grant agreement, the EU contribution will be reduced accordingly.
In order to mitigate the risk of underspending the EU contribution, applicants are requested to
demonstrate in their proposal (for guidance see proposal template) that at least 20% of their
contributions is provided separately and in addition to the amount needed to match the Union
contribution to the co-funded call.
The following categories of costs are eligible direct costs (if they comply with the general
conditions and the specific conditions set out in the grant agreement):
A. Costs related to trans-national projects
A.1 Direct costs of providing financial support to third parties implementing transnational
projects
A.2 Costs for the implementation of trans-national projects by the beneficiaries
The consortium must provide financial support to trans-national projects or implement such
projects (partially or fully) themselves in accordance with the following conditions:
The projects must be trans-national projects involving at least two independent entities from
two different EU Member States or Associated Countries.
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See Article 199 of the Financial Regulation No 966/2012.
HORIZON 2020 – WORK PROGRAMME 2018-2020
General Annexes
Part 19 - Page 13 of 37
The projects must be selected following a joint trans-national call for proposals. The
consortium must publish the joint call on a dedicated webpage and promote it at
national/regional level via their usual channels of communications to potential proposers. The
joint call must remain open for the submission of proposals for at least 60 days. The
consortium must formally notify the Commission of the call and its content at least 30 days
before the expected date of publication.
The consortium must make the joint call through a two-step procedure:
Step 1: review at national or trans-national level
Step 2: single international peer review.
Only entities that are eligible for funding under the national programmes involved in the
joint call may be invited to step 2.
In step 2, the consortium must evaluate proposals with the assistance of at least three
independent experts, on the basis of the following award criteria:
(a)
excellence;
(b)
impact;
(c)
quality and efficiency of the implementation.
Proposals must be ranked according to the evaluation results. The selection must be made on
the basis of this ranking. The consortium must take all lawful steps to ensure confidentiality of
information and documents obtained during the evaluation and selection procedures of the
joint call.
After the end of the evaluation the consortium must submit to the Commission the following:
(a)
the ranking list(s) of the
projects;
(b)
the observers' report on
the evaluation;
(c)
the joint selection list of the projects
to be funded, and
(d)
from each consortium partner participating in the joint call, a formal and duly
signed commitment on availability of funds for the selected projects.
The consortium must furthermore submit to the European Commission after the end of the
evaluation information on each project selected for funding, including data on each participant
and abstracts of the project proposal, in a format specified by the European Commission, for
publication and evaluation purposes. This information must be updated at the end of the action
(information on each funded project, including data on each participant and overview of the
results).
B. Coordination costs for additional activities, as a unit cost per year
An ERA-NET Cofund consortium should also carry out other activities in addition to the call
receiving top-up funding, in particular additional joint calls without cofunding from the Union.
Where appropriate, additional partners might be involved which do not participate in co-
funded calls under section A. The activities have to be related to the coordination of public
research and innovation programmes and should focus on the preparation and implementation
of joint activities including additional calls without EU top-up funding. The conditions for call
implementation in section A do not apply to additional calls without EU top-up funding.
The coordination cost for the other activities takes the form of a unit cost per year and is
limited to those beneficiaries that carry out activities that go beyond the co-funded call.