If you have been advised that you were selected for funding; the granting authority will proceed with the signing of these two documents:
- The Grant Agreement (GA), which defines the work that the consortium commits to carry out during the duration of the funded project. The GA lists the project partners (the “beneficiaries”) and specifies the project activities, duration, budget, EU contribution and all rights and obligations. The GA is signed between the granting authority and the coordinator of the consortium, while the other beneficiaries are requested to sign an Accession Agreement. The standard GA template is available here (the majority of GA provisions cannot be altered).
- The Declaration of Honour (DoH), which ensures that all beneficiaries comply with the rules and are not in a situation that would exclude them from receiving EU funding (e.g. bankruptcy). This Declaration of Honour needs to be signed before the Grant Agreement can be signed. The standard DoH template is available here.
In addition, the consortium will sign the Consortium Agreement (CA), which is a binding contract signed between the partners of a Horizon Europe collaborative project, describing internal arrangements regarding their operation and coordination, to ensure that the action is implemented properly.
The CA should cover for instance: The internal organisation of the consortium; the management of access to the EU portal; payments and financial responsibilities; additional rules on rights and obligations related to background and results; settlement of internal disputes; and liability, indemnification and confidentiality arrangements between the beneficiaries. The internal arrangements must not contain any provision contrary to the GA.
There is no official template for the CA. The EU recommends using the DESCA template.
The project officer
For each project, there is a project officer (PO) from the EU who accompanies the consortium throughout the project implementation. The PO is the main contact person for any EU matters and is in communication with the coordinator, who represents the project on behalf of the consortium.
Validation process
All the legal entities receiving funding from the EU must be validated.
The validation will be done by the Central Validation Service, which carries out the validation for all EU services using the Portal.
The Central Validation Service will contact any person who registered with the organisation (Self-registrant) and ask them to upload official supporting documents (via the “My Organisations” page) and clarify any details. This person will fill out a legal entity identification form and provide an official VAT document, registration extract, statutes or act of establishment, etc. The detailed list of documents is also explained in Rules on Legal Entity Validation, LEAR appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment.
The Central Validation Service will check that your organization is legally recognised (has legal personality), proving that the representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on the organization’s behalf and that the organization has financial and operational capacity equivalent to that of legal persons.
The Central Validation Service will also check whether your organization qualifies for some of the special legal statuses that are required for some funding programmes (private or public body, non-profit, international organization).
The outcome of this process is the validation of your organization and the PIC that was registered prior to the submission. The Central Validation Service will send a confirmation message once the process is completed and the PIC is validated.
LEAR appointment and validation
Parallel to the validation of the organization, you will be requested by the Central Validation Service to appoint your Legal Entity Appointed Representative (LEAR).
The LEAR role will be performed by any member of the organization (typically from the central administration). The LEAR formally nominated to manage the organization’s use of the EU Portal will bear the final responsibility for all your actions in the Portal.
Once validated, The LEAR will be responsible for:
- Keeping an overview of all the proposals/projects/contracts the organization is involved in;
- Managing all the legal and financial information about the organization;
- Managing the access rights at organization-level (and read-only access at project-level);
- Appointing the persons who are authorized to electronically sign grants/contracts (Legal Signatories — LSIGNs) and cost claims/invoices (Financial Signatories — FSIGNs).
The LEAR appointment is done by a legal representative of the organization, who is the person in the organization with the necessary legal authority for this type of decisions (e.g. typically CEOs, rectors, directors-general, etc.)
Further details about the LEAR’s rights, responsibilities and LEAR appointment are available on the online manual.