PF: Can a request for a part-time employment in Postdoctoral Fellowships be sent to REA in the Grant Agreement Preparation period?

In the MSCA Financial Guide (p. 12) it says that “Requests for part-time employment may only be accepted in agreement with the supervisor and beneficiary and with prior notification to the granting authority via the mobility declaration (see section 4 on the mobility declaration).” This would mean that requests for part-time employment should happen after the Grant Agreement has been signed.

PF: Do applicants funded under 2023 calls who are in the Grant Preparation Phase (GAP) have to change the budget of their project so that it includes the updated unit costs in the MSCA Work Programme 2023-2025?

In the updated MSCA Work Programme 2023-2025, under ’Specific conditions for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions’ (p. 108 of 142) there is a footnote saying „These conditions only apply to the 2024 and 2025 calls of this Work Programme. For the conditions applying to the 2023 calls, please see the Work Programme version adopted on 6 December 2022 (European Commission Decision C(2022)7550).”

PF: When do the ranking lists for Postdoctoral Fellowships calls close definitively?

The first batch of reserve list proposals can be promoted to the main list at the earliest two months after the official launch of the GAP, but sometimes after several months (depending on the outcome of the redress procedure).

Proposals in the reserve list can be promoted to the main list until the end of the year following the call deadline (for the 2023 call – until 31 December 2024).

PF: How long can proposals stay on the reserve list?

Based on previous calls, if successful applicants decline their award and thus do not sign their Grant Agreement, this would open places on the reserve list. In this case, applicants on the reserve list are expected to be approached by the end of summer/ early autumn. However, the reserve list stays open until immediately before the results of the next call are announced. So applicants can actually be funded of the reserve list until that point.

PF: Will the situation with the UK association have an impact on projects on the MSCA-PF 2022 reserve list?

If the UK is not associated to Horizon Europe by the final deadline of the Grant Agreement (17 May 2023), then the proposals of successful 2022 MSCA PF applicants with UK hosts will be declared ineligible. Please note that in 2021, these applicants were declared ineligible, together with applicants on the main list, as association had not taken place by the Grant Agreement deadline. Accordingly, these applicants were taken off the reserve list as well.

PF: What happens with the Seal of Excellence for projects on the reserve list?

The Seal of Excellence will be awarded according to the 2021-2022 MSCA WP, p.92: Seals of Excellence will be awarded to applications with a total score equal to or higher than 85%, but which cannot be funded due to lack of budget available to the call.

PF: Has the GAP with successful applicants from the 2021 MSCA PF call been already closed or applicants on the reserve list can still expect to be invited by REA to start the GAP process?

As of November 2022, GAPs with reserve list applicants under the PF 2021 call are still being launched based on the available budget. A very small number of applicants can still expect to receive an invitation to launch the GAP, especially since the PF 2021 budget expires at the end of 2022.

PF: The instructions explicitly say not to encode any other Work Packages. What should be done in case that some deliverables are blocking submission because, as the pop-up menu says, they MUST be associated to a Work package?

To get rid of the warning message blocking the submission, applicants should link the deliverables with WP1.

PF: When will the Seal of Excellence of the 2021 MSCA PF Call be delivered to candidates?

The Seal of Excellence will be sent to the applicants after the redress window is closed (end of April for 2021 call).

Exception for the 9 Ukrainian researchers: fast track process (SoE will be sent as soon as possible).