Project preparation and management
Budget
Building the budget
The budget in EU projects consists of direct and indirect costs.
Direct costs are all those eligible costs that can be attributed directly to the project and are identified by the beneficiary as such, in accordance with its accounting principles and its usual internal rules. The following is a non-exhaustive list of direct eligible costs in EU projects:
The cost of personnel assigned to the project (temporary or permanent, full-time or part-time).
There are two types of personnel costs to be considered when compiling the budget:
► If the persons are known at the time of the proposal, the Standard Personnel Costs at CERN should be used (for more information, please contact the EU Projects Office.
► If the persons are not know at the time of the proposal, the Average Personnel Costs at CERN should be used.
Travel costs and related subsistence allowances for people taking part in the project (are eligible if they are in line with the beneficiary’s usual practices on travel).
The purchase cost of durable equipment (in accordance to the depreciation system of each beneficiary).
The costs of consumables, materials and supplies provided they are identifiable and assigned to the project.
Cost for sub-contracting, when it is indicated in the Description of Action.
Indirect costs, also called overheads, on the other hand, are all those eligible costs that cannot be identified and calculated by the beneficiary as being directly attributed to each project. Overheads comprise costs connected with infrastructures and the general operation of the organisation such as hiring or depreciation of buildings and plant, water/gas/electricity, maintenance, insurance, supplies and petty office equipment, communication and connection costs, postage, etc., and costs connected with horizontal services such as administrative and financial management, human resources, training, legal advice, documentation, etc.
In Horizon Europe, the indirect costs are calculated on the basis of a 25% flat-rate of the total direct eligible costs, excluding direct eligible costs for subcontracting and financial support to third parties.
More information about the budget of EU projects, including the use of the overheads at CERN is described in the following note.
Templates
Templates and examples of Horizon Europe proposals and Consortium Agreements can be found here.
Evaluation
After an eligibility check, the proposals submitted to a particular call are sent for evaluation to independent experts, selected by the European Commission taking into account their expertise and previous experience in evaluation of EU projects. Each evaluator may be asked to evaluate a number of proposals from the same call – typically 5 to 10, depending on the size of the projects. The evaluators assess the proposals on the basis of a pre-defined set of evaluation criteria, which are listed on the call description page. The evaluation is done remotely, and then all experts who have evaluated the same set of projects are convened in Brussels to a consensus meeting where they discuss the proposals and try to align their evaluation scores taking into account the opinion of the others. The outcome of this meeting is a Consensus Report, which contains the scores and comments for each of the evaluated projects.
The next step of the evaluation process is the panel review. The panel consists of representatives from each group of evaluators assessing the projects of a given call. The task of the panel is to examine and compare the consensus reports in that area, to check on the consistency of the scores applied during the consensus discussions and, where necessary, propose a new set of scores. The panel then establishes the ranking list for all projects submitted to that call, and gives that list to the European Commission. The final decision regarding the funding or rejection of projects is taken by the European Commission unit in charge of that call, based on the available budget, and has to be approved by the Programme Committee.
The Evaluation Summary Report, which the coordinator receives after the evaluation is completed, contains a number of comments that give an indication of the strong and weak points of the proposal.
Grant agreement, reporting and IP
After the evaluation of proposals is completed, the next step is the Grant Agreement preparation and signature.
If the proposal has been selected for funding, the Project Coordinator will receive the Evaluation Summary Report and will be invited to prepare the Grant Agreement. The Grant Agreement is signed between the Coordinator and the EC and is deemed to enter into force on the day of the last signature.
Find out more about the grant agreement here.
The Grant Agreement and its annexes, as well as the Consortium Agreement, need to be reviewed by the departments concerned and by several administrative services, including External Grants, Legal Service, and Knowledge Transfer (for the IPR aspects). The EU Projects Office is in charge of coordinating this internal review procedure, and upon its completion, of bringing the Grant and Consortium Agreements for signature to the Directorate.
Most EU-funded projects require regular reporting of activities and costs, to ensure the project is running as intended. For more information on this, see here.
Intellectual property rights (IPR) play an important role in Horizon Europe contracts (Grant and Consortium Agreements). For more information on IPR, see here.
The CERN Legal Service and the Knowledge Transfer Group should be consulted during the preparation of the Grant and Consortium Agreements, in order to determine whether access to any specific CERN IPR should be made subject to conditions and whether the IPR conditions defined by other partners are acceptable for CERN.