PF: Are the Seal of Excellence projects automatically considered for ERA Fellowships?

Seal of Excellence projects are not automatically considered for ERA Fellowships.

PF: Where can applicants check whether the fellow who submitted a MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship proposal agreed to the proposal to participate in the ERA Fellowships?

The ERA Fellowships question is only visible once the applicants include the PIC of the Host institution from a widening country. That’s why it does not appear in the standard application form.

In the downloaded version of the submitted proposal applicants can see this question and answer, under Other questions – question #5. It can be seen which of the two options, “yes” or “no”, the fellow has checked.

PF: There seems to be a technical issue where the ERA Fellowship question does not appear when choosing a host institution from the outermost regions of France and Spain. What can applicants with a host organisation in outermost regions do?

REA has informed that the technical issue regarding this question has still not been resolved for the 2022 call in case of the outermost regions, and that they will contact applicants post-submission. Applicants could always just report this issue via the Research enquiry service to make sure they have duly notified the EC about it.

PF: Do applicants have to submit a separate proposal for the widening call to be considered for this funding?

There is no need to submit a separate application for the widening call. This is the procedure, as described on p.56 of the Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area Work programme 2021-2022: 

“In order to apply for the ERA Fellowships call, applicants need to submit their proposal to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowships 2021. To be eligible to this call the host organisation must be located in an eligible widening country. The application to the (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowships 2021 will be automatically resubmitted to this call in case the proposal fails to reach an adequate place in the ranking to be funded. This simplified submission procedure to the ERA Fellowships call presents applicants moving to Widening countries with an additional funding opportunity but there is the possibility to opt out during the application stage.”