European Partnership Help Center

Welcome to the ERA-LEARN Help Center for European Partnerships. Here you will find a collection of frequently asked questions and answers from our webinars and events. More questions and answers will be added over time. If you have any partnership related questions, please send them to office@era-learn.eu and we will add them to the Help Center.

How does the partnership reserve budget for new partners to join after the Grant Agreement has been signed? Can new partners joining via an amendment receive an EU top-up in FSTP calls?

When a new beneficiary joins the consortium, an amendment to the Grant Agreement is required. The maximum EU contribution will not be increased. However, the consortium may agree, through the amendment, on a redistribution of the existing budget. Whether a new partner receives EU-top-up in a FSTP call or not is, therefore, up to the consortium’s internal arrangements. In most cases, the new partner will need to cover the FSTP costs with own resources. The only exception may be when additional partners join through a top-up call and a resulting amendment (where a new proposal outlining new partners and activities triggers another evaluation and, if successful, may result in an increased Union contribution).
What happens when less FSTP was paid out than planned?

In that case, partners will have fewer costs to report as eligible cost under FSTP and the related EU-funding will be reduced accordingly. The earlier reference considered only the pre-financing. The committed amount for FSTP is considered as blocked by Executive Agencies and, therefore, counts towards the 70% consumption of the prefinancing. When fewer costs are incurred, this is reflected in the reporting and in the resulting payment.
If a beneficiary participates in the MIM, wouldn't the 5% be considered part of the pre-financing usage and thus count toward the 70% utilisation requirement?

For the purpose of the 70% usage threshold, the relevant amount is the prefinancing as defined in the Grant Agreement.
Funded researchers always liked that they are somewhere in between the EU funding programme and the national programme. Is this still the same in co-funded partnerships?

That is indeed common feedback. Even if it is complex to navigate the consortium, they know how to handle the funding process at a national level. Therefore, the actual effort for applicants remained the same, and the administrative burden falls on the partnerships’ side.
What is a good number of oversubscription rate and how do you deal with decreasing budgets of the FSTP calls?

The example partnership started with an oversubscription rate of 3 and for those that do not get any EU-co-funding with 2 and later increased to 4 and 3 respectively. Higher rates tend to be inefficient. Other partnerships use similar figures. Concerning the budget decrease: unforeseen changes, such as dropouts or the entry of additional funding agencies, are normal. Using the budget efficiently is the more important objective. Partnerships deal with long-term budgets based on assumptions; therefore, the absolute budget level is less critical than using the available budget efficiently. Flexibility is essential.
At which stage does the European Commission agree that the proposed procedure of dealing with conflicts of interests is good enough?

The affected entities must be identified, and the procedures to ensure appropriate firewalls are in place must be explained in the proposal; this will be assessed as part of the evaluation. In cases where the procedure is defined after the proposal submission, the coordinator must contact the Project Officer. An amendment of the Grant Agreement will be needed to include the suggested procedure.