FP7 Grant Agreement Amendments: basic principles and processing FP7 Grant Agreement Negotiations A Directorate F initiative for coordinators from the FP7-HEALTH-2010-single-stage call and NCPs Brussels, 16th April 2010 Gaia Fantechi, Ph.D. Deputy Head of the Administration and Finance Unit Health Directorate, DG Research

What is an amendment? Legal act to modify commitments of the GA (core text and Annex I only) Same authorised persons, written document Exchange of letters : content must clearly demonstrate the agreement of the parties, the 2 letters form the amendment Equal rules and procedures for all funding schemes

When is it necessary? General rule: whenever a party wants to introduce a change to the core GA and/or Annex I (DoW), which depends on the agreement of the parties Typical & most common cases: non-accession to GA, addition or termination of participation of beneficiaries, change of coordinator, extension of project duration, modification of Annex I-DoW, change of banking details, change to coordinator’s contact details, …

Amendments: How to proceed? Who: legal representative of the coordinator as identified in the GA How: Model letter mandatory (ref. Amendment guide available on CORDIS) with correct reference to GA number to be amended Sent to the address of article 8.1 Including all necessary supporting documents When : In due time (usually before end of project)

Main novelties Amendment requests containing more than one modification to GA can be treated separately provided the request letter explicitly states so Coordinator can accept on behalf of the Consortium an amendment proposed by the Commission Possibility for the Commission to make a counter-proposal to the Consortium request (no need for the Consortium to resubmit a request). The acceptance should be received by the Commission within 60 days.

Main novelties In case of addition of new beneficiary to GA, PIC (Participant’s Identification Code) must be available & valid. If new beneficiary not yet registered in URF, it must do so before submission of amendment http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/pp_en.html

Main novelties What about changes that do not depend on the agreement of the parties and which do not require an amendment signed by the legal representatives ? Information letters

Main novelties: information letters Information letters to be used in case of: Universal transfer of rights & obligations (except coordinator) Change of legal name or legal details of beneficiaries Change of legal status (eg. SME which is no longer an SME) and mistake in indirect cost calculation Advantages of Information letters: Lighter procedure Directly from the beneficiary to the Commission (via its LEAR) One letter per beneficiary & not per GA

Amendments: What is the procedure? Preliminary informal contacts between coordinator and EC Project officer before formal submission are necessary for : -sending valid requests (to be treated within 45 days) . For this the EC Project officer liases also with Administration&Finance Unit F.6 -F.6 to open a new NEF amendment session for coordinator which needs to submit eg. new signed GPFs with amendment request

What is the procedure?

Information letters: Procedure Beneficiary informs URF (via LEAR) URF validates changes & informs Administration & Finance Units. sends a registered email confirmation to the beneficiary Administration & Finance Units inform GA coordinators

To summarize… URF EC Change of name and legal details of a beneficiary Universal transfer of rights and obligations (except if COO! Then modification of banking details, contact, possibly necessity of addition of special clause…) 3. Changes in accounting system of beneficiaries, in legal status under FP7 rules and mistakes in indirect cost calculation 4. Other (see art. II.3 (f)) eg. Any event which might affect implementation 5. Change of COO’s legal representative URF EC

Information and updates Amendments Guide for FP7 GA: ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/docs/amendments-ga_en.pdf Research enquiry helpdesk (legal & financial issues): http://ec.europa.eu/research/index.cfm?pq=enquiries IT helpdesk EC-FP7-IT-HELPDESK@ec.europa.eu

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