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.

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.
Do in-kind contributions generate EU co-funding or are only own resources co-funded?

Under co-funded partnership, in-kind contributions "free of charge" (within the meaning of Article 2(38) of the EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509, i.e. non-financial resources made available free of charge by third parties) can also be charged to the project and contribute to the total cost of the project, based on which reimbursement rate applies. In-kind contributions provided by third parties free-of charge may be declared as eligible direct costs by the beneficiaries that use them (under the same conditions as if they were their own), provided that they concern only direct costs and that the third parties and their in-kind contributions are set out in Annex 1 (or approved ex-post in the periodic report, if their use does not entail changes to the Agreement, which would call into question the decision awarding the grant or breach the principle of equal treatment of applicants; ‘simplified approval procedure’). Further guidance on FSTP in EU grants is available here. However, in the context of co-funded European Partnerships, the term “in-kind contributions” is sometimes (wrongly) used to refer to additional, non-call activities. Such additional activities are eligible for funding as well, provided that they comply with the eligible cost categories laid out in the Model Grant Agreement, contribute to the objectives of the partnership, and are included in work plans.