SE: Can USA organisations participate in Staff Exchanges and receive funding?

USA entities can participate in Staff Exchanges projects by receiving and sending staff during the project. However, no funding is allocated to them.

Depending on an internal agreement of the consortium, USA participants can receive some budget from the coordinator, but this is not very common. Another option is to request exceptional funding due to their participation being considered essential for implementing the project.

DN: How rare are requests for exceptional funding e.g. have there been any successful requests in the 2022 Doctoral Networks Call?

Regarding exceptional funding requests, there have been no successful requests for the US in Horizon Europe, but there have been two successful requests in 2021 for Switzerland, and a few successful cases for US, Canada, Japan and Australia in Horizon 2020.

DN: Is it possible to make a case for exceptional funding on the basis of a person who is a world leader in the field and what they and their organisation can provide rather than access to particular research infrastructure, or access to data or geographical expertise?

It is possible to make a case for any reason, but it might be harder to make such case as being a world leader is by essence more subjective than having access to specific and unique data or infrastructure.

DN: If a proposal is selected for funding, but the exceptional funding request for a Third Country beneficiary is not accepted, is their involvement disregarded and the network is awarded funding for less doctoral candidates or are person-months for their doctoral candidates redistributed among the consortium?

If the project is funded but the exceptional funding denied, then the maximum grant amount would be reduced by the amount of the requested amount for the third country, and funding available for less doctoral candidates. The third country can still participate but with their own funds, as associated partners. Please note that in the very rare event that they are funded and the exceptional funding granted, the doctoral candidates hosted in the third country would still need to be enrolled in a PhD programme in a MS/ AC.  

Please note that in case the exceptional funding is not granted/ positively assessed by the experts, the proposal is still assessed as it is and the third country participation is NOT disregarded but assessed as if they were participating with their own funds.

Switzerland has national funding to complement Doctoral Networks funding and to recruit PhD candidates (not official MSCA fellows, but Swiss funded PhD candidates joining the Network). Swiss organisations are advised to join as ‘Associated Partner’ and not to take the risk of trying to be an exceptional beneficiary and to be ‘essential to implement the project’. There have been cases where Swiss partners were recognised as essential to implement a Doctoral Networks project and got the status of a beneficiary. It can happen, but it is always risky.