The beneficiaries, led by the coordinator, will implement the project and submit the reports and deliverables, as outlined in the proposal and Grant Agreement (GA).
The coordinator is in charge of submitting the deliverables in the SyGMa system and communicating with the Project Officer (PO).
For every project, the European Research Executive Agency (REA) appoints a PO to handle communication with the coordinator and oversea the progress of the project. During the lifetime of the project, the PO will evaluate the progress of the project by assessing the deliverables and the financial aspects, meeting with the partners and providing the official review report at the end of the reporting period.
If any substantial changes or modifications are needed (for example adding partners or modifying the legal entity), the coordinator must submit an amendment to the PO informing about the changes.
Funding
The reporting and payment arrangements are fixed in the GA.
The funds will be transferred from the granting authority to the coordinator, who will distribute the funds to the beneficiaries, in accordance with the GA.
After the grant has been signed, the consortium will normally receive a float to start working on the project (normally, pre-financing of 160% of the average EU funding per reporting period [i.e. maximum grant amount/number of periods]; exceptionally, less or no pre-financing). For actions with only one reporting period, it will be less, since 100% would mean the totality of the grant amount. Programme co-fund actions may receive additional pre-financing payments.
At the moment of the prefinancing payment, an amount ranging from 5% to 8% of the maximum grant amount will be deducted from the prefinancing payment and transferred to the mutual insurance mechanism. This mechanism covers the risks associated with nonrecovery of sums due from the beneficiaries.
There will be one or several interim payments linked to a periodic report, depending on the duration of the project.
At the end of the project, the consortium will be invited to submit a report, on the basis of which the final grant amount will be calculated. If the total of earlier payments is higher than the final grant amount, the beneficiaries concerned (or the coordinator) will be asked to pay back the difference (recovery).
The final payment will be received after the project has been completed.
In cases of lump sum funding, the funds, except for the pre-financing payment, will be transferred in accordance with the completion of the work packages, following the reporting to the EU.
Record keeping
The beneficiaries must keep records and supporting documents at least until the time limit set out in the project’s Data Sheet (under “Standard time-limits after project end”), which is an appendix to the GA, in order to prove the proper implementation of the action.