DN: Is it necessary to include an Ethics Work Package in a proposal that has ethical issues?

Usually, this is not necessary as ethics should be dealt with in Part A (including ethics self-assessment) and, if selected for funding and there is an ethics requirement, a mandatory Ethics Work Package will be created with ethics deliverables.

On p. 23-24 of the Horizon Europe Programme Guide it is stated that “All proposals above threshold and considered for funding will undergo an Ethics Review ... The Review starts with the Ethics Screening ... If appropriate a further analysis called the Ethics Assessment is conducted. The Ethics Assessment can lead to ethics requirements that become contractual obligations… The Ethics Assessment is an in-depth analysis of the ethical issues of the proposals, taking into account the analysis made during the Ethics screening. The Ethics Assessment can lead to ethics requirements that are inserted as obligations in the grant agreement.”

In addition, sometimes it depends on the dimension that ethics might have in a particular project. There are projects which deal with an ethically heavy workload and for well justified reasons a lot of weight is put onto ethics. In these cases, a separate, already well defined ethics work package can make sense.