FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

According to the conditions of the ERC Starting Grant 2021 call, as long as no PhD document or equivalent is uploaded in the submission tool of the Funding & Tenders Portal, it will not be possible to validate/submit the proposal. A warning message will inform the applicant of the missing document. If another document is uploaded instead and the PhD certificate is missing, the ERCEA may contact the PI and ask for a clarification and the missing document.

For more information, see section 'Admissibility and eligibility criteria' of the ERC Work Programme 2021.

Before engaging in communication activities expected to have a major media impact, European Research Council (ERC) grantees (beneficiaries/participants) must inform the ERC Executive Agency via their project officers or via the mailbox ERC-PRESS@ec.europa.eu.

The European emblem (flag) may be used by third parties only if is not:

• likely to create confusion between the user and the European Union or the Council of Europe;
• linked to aims or activities incompatible with the principles and objectives of the European Union or the Council of Europe.In the case of EU-funded projects:
• logos that are developed for projects funded by the EU, and that are not owned by the EU, may not be identical or similar to the European emblem (this includes logos that incorporate the twelve stars);
• the European emblem should be given appropriate prominence when displayed in association with a logo;
• contractors are exempt from the obligation to obtain prior permission from the Commission to use the emblem, but are subject to the general third-party-use restrictions mentioned above. This tacit authorization to use the European emblem implies no right of exclusive use. It does not permit the appropriation of the emblem, or of any similar trade mark or logo, whether by registration or by any other means.For further information please see :  Europa - The European Flag  (see the Graphics guide to the European flag link for more details)

The European Research Council (ERC) logo and European emblem can be downloaded from the ERC website "logos and banners" page. The ERC logo can be used by beneficiaries of ERC funding support for the sole purpose of acknowledging that suppport. No explicit permission is necessary to use the ERC logo in this case.

For actual cost-based H2020 actions & MSCA actions

• Given this unprecedented pandemic situation, maximum flexibility will be given in relation to the action implementation.
• Whenever possible, beneficiaries are encouraged to telework or to use other forms of remote working. Teleworking during the confinement and the subsequent transitional period will be accepted even if it is not the beneficiary’s usual practice to telework. Costs of hours worked for the Horizon 2020 action via teleworking during those periods are eligible under the same conditions than hours worked on-site. For actual cost-based grants, the beneficiary is also entitled to the 25 % indirect costs flat rate on the costs of those teleworked hours. Private costs incurred by the employee for its teleworking activities (e.g. electricity at home, internet connection fee, printer consumables, etc.) are not eligible as direct costs for the Horizon 2020 actions. The potential reimbursement of those costs by the beneficiary to the employee is covered by the 25 % flat rate for indirect costs.

Beneficiaries are also highly encouraged to shift their tasks whenever possible. For instance, tasks where physical presence is needed on the ground (e.g. experiments/lab work, etc.) may be postponed after the confinement measures are over and meanwhile remote work could be done instead (desk work, drafting of reports, etc.) Costs will still be eligible for the work carried out under the action even if such shifting entails deviations from the initial timing set out in Annex 1.

Additional possibility for H2020 MSCA actions:

• Beneficiaries are reminded that periods in which a researcher was absent for 30 consecutive days or less (for reasons other than normal annual leave) can STILL be charged to the action and the costs will be eligible.
• Moreover, the budget is flexible on the use of the amounts received. Research, training and networking unit costs should be used primarily for the research, training and networking activities planned in Annex 1. Yet, beneficiaries may allocate some of these amounts to help maintaining the salary of the researchers that are prevented from implementing the action due to the COVID-19 situation. There is no time limit for the use of these funds.
• Beneficiaries have the same flexibility on deciding how to spend the institutional unit costs in order to complete their research. The only condition is that the Research, Training and Networking costs must be spent in support of the implementation of the project, as outlined in the Annex 1 to the grant agreement. There is no time limit for the use of these funds.

MSCA COFUND: Institutions have flexibility to decide how to spend the management unit cost. The latter should be used primarily for the management of the action. Yet, beneficiaries (or other host institutions with whom they have shared the management unit cost) may allocate some of these amounts to help maintaining the salary of the researchers that are prevented from implementing the action due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation. There is also no time limit for the use of these funds.

Additional clarifications for ERC actions:

• Telework arrangements are particularly recommended for Principal Investigators that are currently blocked from returning to the EU or Associated Countries. In such a case, specific arrangements need also to be anticipated and taken also for the team’s work supervision, and ERCEA must be notified accordingly.
• The time teleworked by these PIs during the time they are prevented from returning to the EU or the Associated Countries may count as time spent on the ERC project and in the EU or the Associated Countries for the purpose of the Principle Investigator’s time commitments. However, time records for the PIs should be kept even if no personnel costs are charged for him/her to the project.

Yes. Any SME (as defined by Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC) can be a Host Institution (HI) for an ERC grant as long as it meets the conditions of eligibility of the HI laid down in the ERC Work Programme 2021.

Under the ERC-2021-AdG call, the Scientific Proposal (Part B2) can be maximum 14 pages.

Since the ERC-2019-AdG call, the budget table and description of resources are part of the administrative proposal submission form (Part A, 3 - Budget) and do not count towards the page limit of the Scientific Proposal (Part B2).

The justification of the project costs and description of time commitment (Resources and Time Commitment) can be maximum two pages, i.e. Section C. Resources may have a maximum length of 8000 characters, including spaces. Please note that 4000 characters, font size 11, single line spacing, correspond to one A4 text page.

The budget table itself does not count towards the page limit.

Yes, as specified in the ERC Work Programme 2021, a PI whose proposal was evaluated as category A or category B at step 2 in an ERC 2020 Starting (StG), Consolidator (CoG) or Advanced (AdG) call, or evaluated A or B at step 3 in the ERC 2020 Synergy (SyG) call, may submit a proposal to the ERC Advanced Grant 2021 (ERC-2021-ADG) call.

No, under call ERC-2021-AdG, a Principal Investigator (PI) whose proposal was evaluated as category C in the step 1 Starting (StG), Consolidator (CoG), Advanced (AdG) Grant or Synergy Grant (SyG) calls for proposals under ERC Work Programme 2019 and 2020 may not submit a proposal to the ADG call under Work Programme 2021. For more information, please refer to the restrictions on submission of proposals in the ERC Work Programme 2021.