27 / 03 / 2018


EARTO Publishes Recommendations for FP9 Rules for Participation: Funding Rules

The strongest aspect of Horizon 2020 is its focus on excellence and collaboration across a variety of RD&I actors ranging from Research & Technology Organisations (RTOs), Industry (large and SMEs) and academia to public actors. With their multi-disciplinary understanding of technology and its maturation process, their technology infrastructures and their market insight, RTOs are essential to build long-term and trusted ecosystems of all these RD&I partners. Excellent cross-border collaborative research should continue to be fostered within FP9 as an indispensable element of our RD&I ecosystem to have real impact on job creation and economic growth.   To further increase FPs’ impact, EARTO believes that FP9 Rules for Participation should be set up to support such collaboration. In that frame, EARTO very much welcomes the European Commission’s continuous efforts towards FP simplification and would like to bring further suggestions for the elaboration of FP9 Rules for Participation, with the aim of improving the management and efficiency of the FP (see paper attached).   To do so, EARTO members would like to make the following recommendations:
  1. Further reflect the beneficiaries’ accounting practices and cost categories
  2. Improve the flat rate approach to better reflect the real costs of RTOs: • increase flat rate covering indirect costs • allow & simplify the claims of infrastructure costs • allow reasonable allocation keys in the calculation of direct costs
  3. Carry out a thorough evaluation of the lump-sum approach prior to any expansion
  4. Further improve measures for ex-ante assurance and legal certainty
  5. Reduce the audit burden to further simplify the FP
  6. Provide one single set of rules aligned on the FP rules for every programme performed with EU funding
  We hope that this paper will contribute to further simplification and improvement of the EU RD&I Framework Programme. EARTO and its financial experts remain ready to further discuss these recommendations with the relevant EU institutions.   EARTO Recommendations for FP9 Rules for Participation: Funding Rules