Call for Proposals

 Invitation letter

 Annex I - Model for proposal

 Annex II – Model Framework Partnership Agreement

 Annex III – Form A – Form B – Model Specific Grant Agreement

 Annex IV - Declaration on honour

 Annex V - Financial identification and legal entity forms

  Annex VI - Rules on Eligibility of Costs

  Annex VII - List of EU grants

 Annex VIIIa Estimated Budget for Year 1 activities

  Annex VIIIb - Estimated Unit Prices for further activities

Questions and Answers

Question: Do we need to submit any ORIGINALLY signed documents from the Consortium partners, or electronic copies/scans will suffice?

Answer: Scanned copies can be considered sufficient for the application; original documentation shall be requested to the awarded applicant.



Question:Whether it is acceptable/sufficient  to provide Letters of Intent send by the Consortium members on behalf of their institutions and individuals if their document sets are still incomplete (most Consortium Partners have already provided their documents, but some haven’t due to a time constrains).

Answer: Incomplete documents by consortium members can be considered acceptable if the applicant completes the documentation in a reasonably fast manner.

Question: Annex 1 specifies the list of documents which should be submitted, including Executive summary, documents relating to clauses 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5 of the Call for proposal, and Annex VII.  Our questions are:

Which documents related to the clause 4.5 (award criteria) should be submitted? Are these documents required from each Consortium member or from the Co-ordinator only?

Similarly, documents related to the Clause 4.4 (selection criteria): do you need relevant documents from ALL partners or from the Co-ordinator only?

Answer: Concerning the award criteria, as the documents concerned include all those relevant for applying the award criteria, in addition to the Executive summary, the budget proposal (Annex VIII) is to be submitted. These are to be submitted for the consortium as a whole. In relation to the selection criteria, each member of the consortium is requested to provide evidence. Concerning the selection criteria “technical and professional capacity”, the evidence provided by each member of the consortium will be checked to ensure that the consortium as a whole fulfils the criteria.

Question: Framework agreement (Annex II) and Specific agreement (Annex II to the Framework Agreement) are not listed in the Model Structure (list of documents, Annex I). However, Section 2.9 in the Call for proposal says “due to the calendar planning…. The submission of the first specific grant agreement is already requested with this application”. Do we need to submit the specific grant agreement with all the annexes (description of the work package, budget, and technical implementations)? Are we right assuming that THREE specific agreements have to be submitted (one per the work package)?

Answer: Only one specific agreement is to be signed, including all the work packages concerned for the first year. ECDC will send the actual documents of Annex II and Annex III for signature to the awarded applicant after the award procedure. The submission of the first specific grant agreement for the work packages should be proposed in the Executive summary, clarifying its boundaries in relation to the whole application; in Annex VIIIa for the budget, which refers in specific to the first year activities; and other documents if applicable. These documents shall be part of the first specific agreement in form of annex.

Question: Annex III to the Framework Agreement (accession to the framework partnership agreement) establishes the relationship between the Co-ordinator and the Partners. At what stage this document will be required? Do we need to get these forms signed by the Consortium partners BEFORE the submission and submit to the ECDC along with other documents?

Answer: The document should be submitted within 60 calendar days after entry into force of the contract with the modalities indicated in Article 1.2 Constitution of the Consortium of Annex II model framework partnership agreement.

Question: Are financial ID and legal entity forms (Annex V) required from ALL Consortium partners or from the Co-ordinator only? Do we need to submit these forms if the Co-ordinator and partners are already established in the EU as valid legal entities being partners and co-ordinators in a number of the FP7 EU-funded projects?

Answer:  These documents are to be sent by the Co-ordinator only. The supporting documents do not need to be submitted if they were already submitted before, apart from the indication in the application of the references of the legal entity and the bank account coordinates, as confirmation of the documents to be retrieved from the EC database.

Question: By the end of the year 1, the ERLN is supposed to include at least 27 members. Will all these members be supposed to join the Consortium?

Answer:   The initial consortium submitting the application does not need to include laboratories from each of the countries involved. Only the coordinating partner and the other initial applicants will need to sign the agreement form as from Annex IIIa (within 60 days from inception).

Following start up of the project, the ERLN-TB network shall be extended to all 27 EU Member States, EEA/EFTA countries, Candidate Countries (see section 2.3 of the call) and where appropriate also potential candidate countries (mentioned as accessing EU countries in section 2.9). There can be more than one member per country joining, as some countries could necessitate bringing in the network two (for example) laboratories in order to fulfill the needs.

Members of the ERLN-TB network that are not partners in the initial consortium will contribute to the implementation as sub-contractors. Alternatively, the option to become partners in the consortium will remain open to all network members, and subject to signing the agreement included in Annex IIIb.