SE: In Part A where should the number of person-months corresponding to the secondments planned for the staff hired by organisations located in third countries eligible for EU funding be indicated?

The person months to be encoded for the Associated Partner located in a third country eligible for funding can be entered in the budget table of Part A, in the corresponding line for this partner.

SE: Considering the new partnership CSIR-EU that allows Indian partners to be funded in Staff Exchanges proposals, in part A, in the budget table should the Indian partners still indicate 0 budget?

The new CSIR-EU partnership establishes a co-funding mechanism, allowing Indian partners in Staff Exchanges proposals to receive top-up funding from CSIR. Accordingly, for Indian partners it should still be indicated a budget of 0 in Part A of the budget table of the submission form.

SE: Should the number of secondments from entities from high-income third countries which are not automatically eligible for funding be included in the budget table?

Normally, no. However, if the consortium would like to apply for exceptional funding for these entities, they would have to encode a certain number of seconded researchers and person months. If this request is declined, the consortium will not have the possibility to redistribute these person-months. The request for exceptional funding should be well explained in Part B1. It is quite rare for the requests for exceptional funding to be granted.

SE: Applicants receive warnings in the portal for not having encoded person months or budget for the associated partners? Should they ignore these warnings?

Indeed, this is a standard warning for the applicants to pay attention to the fact that there might be something incorrect in the proposal, however, as it is an ‘orange notification’, the system allows applicants to submit the proposal anyway.

All organisations are registered as ‘partner’ in the portal, therefore the system asks applicants to double-check and be sure that they planned a certain budget for each partner (>0 for beneficiaries and =0 for associated partners).

DN: When creating the budget in a Doctoral Networks proposal the calculated family allowance is 495 euro instead of 660 euro. Why is that?

At proposal stage, an assumption is made that 75% of the fellows will have the right to benefit from the family allowance. As such, 75% of 660 euro is 495 euro and in the budget section of Part A in the Portal every beneficiary is assigned this amount of family allowance.

DN: A partner in a Doctoral Networks proposal aims to hire 4 PhD candidates, thus leading to an elevated budget (43% of total budget). Would this slight overshoot render their proposal ineligible? Is there an acceptable way to reduce this budget?

Yes, their proposal would be ineligible, as there is the “40% rule” – “no more than 40.0% of the total EU financial contribution may be allocated to beneficiaries in the same country or to any one International European Research Organisation or International Organisation” (p. 5 of the DN 2022 Guide for Applicants). The only way to reduce the budget is to divide the PhD candidates more equally between the participating countries.

In principle, one PhD candidate can be recruited by two different universities, if it makes sense for their PhD project.

PF: As part of a 2022 MSCA Global Fellowship proposal, an applicant would like to start the project with a 3-month secondment at the host organisation selected for their return phase. How is this encoded in the budget table in the Part A of the application?

In this case, the 3-month secondment undertaken at the host organisation selected for your return phase (the beneficiary organisation) counts as part of the outgoing phase and is automatically included in the funding requested for that phase in the budget table of the Part A. This starting secondment undertaken at the beginning of the Fellowship has no effect on the length of the return phase, which has to be 12 months. As clarified on page 11 of the MSCA PF Guide for Applicants, this 3-month starting secondment must be included within the maximum 1/3 duration of the secondment.

PF: Are the budget categories and amounts for the 6-month non-academic placement the same as the ones during the fellowship? Is there a specific budget for the organisation hosting the non-academic placement?

Yes, the budget categories and amounts are exactly the same (same correction coefficient applies even if the non-academic placement takes place in a different country).

There is no specific budget for the non-academic host, but the beneficiary may transfer a part of the institutional costs budget to the non-academic host, in agreement with the fellow and the non-academic host.

PF: Does a European Fellowship applicant have to insert their host institution on p. 14 of 20 of the Application form template where it is indicated ‘country in which return phase will take place’?

In the actual Part A of the European Fellowship proposal, there is no confusion. The PDF template has the Global Fellowship version of the budget table. In the submission system, European Fellowship applicants have the correct version.

DN: How is the family allowance calculated for MSCA Doctoral Networks, as more fellows are entitled to receive the family allowance, given the possibility to receive it in case of change of family status during the MSCA fellowship?

Regarding the estimation of the family allowance budget for a Doctoral Network, there is a footnote (number 37) which starts on page 79 of the MGA for Unit Grants and continues on page 80, which states:

“Average based on the amount for the family allowance set out in the Horizon Europe Work Programme (MSCA Work Programme part) in force at the time of the call (75% of the number of units with family, 25% without).”