European Partnership Help Center

For co-funded partnerships, actual costs need to be reported. The use of unit costs, as in ERA-NET Cofunds, was discontinued under Horizon Europe.

When experts evaluate projects in the FSTP calls, they sign a confidentiality agreement (following the procedures in their organisation). Normally, in such a case, the experts’ organisations cannot be an applicant to the same call, as it is necessary to avoid conflict of interest and ensure confidentiality. Exceptional cases may apply, as described under the question referring to the conflict of interest concerning information barrier and internal firewalls.

In principle, beneficiaries (member of the consortium) of the EU grant can NOT also be final recipients of FSTP (financial support to third parties). However, there are cases where exceptions are permitted, under certain conditions. To make the funding of beneficiaries, which are also Research Performing Organisations, through FSTP possible, they shall not take part in work streams connected to the preparation of FSTP actions (the call preparation etc.). When preparing a proposal for a co-funded partnership, all beneficiaries in such a situation must be clearly identified, and sufficient internal firewalls or information barriers must be put into place to prevent conflict of interests.

Partnerships need to provide at least one credible scenario without EU Framework Programme funding, that fulfils the compulsory elements (outlined in the guidance for the checklist). They may also provide other scenarios, such as merging with other partnerships or support by other funding programmes. The phasing out strategies can be seen as transition strategies in this sense. One reason why the European Commission is making efforts to bring partnerships together by sector was indeed to reflect on future collaborations. The documentation of the workshop on phasing-out strategies is available here. The Commission’s guidelines on phasing-out strategies can be downloaded here.

One file per project is required. This facilitates later updates. Uploads should take place as close to real time as possible. The transfer facility is always available and partnerships can upload the forms as soon as they have the data. An IT tool checks updates. When files are validated (pass security checks in order to accept the submission) the uploading entity can see them live. In some Grant Agreements, these data transfers may be tied to specific deliverables or a milestone to submit the data (this is in fact recommended for new co-funded partnerships launching now). Most of the time this should happen two times per call (list of proposal received and list of signed projects). This is a mandatory legal obligation for all co-funded partnerships stemming from Art. 50 of the Horizon Europe regulation. It applies for both existing partnerships and those under preparation, regardless of whether this obligation is explicitly detailed in the Grant Agreement. The results template is scheduled to be published in Q1/2026.

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).