EARTO published Recommendations regarding the Evaluation & Pre-contractual Negotiations of Lump-sums

EARTO published Recommendations regarding the Evaluation & Pre-contractual Negotiations of Lump-sums EU Funded RD&I Projects. Position concerns mainly the issues of Horizon Dashboard on personnel costs for Lump-sums projects’ evaluations and personnel costs cuts & no negotiation policy being installed.

This is a very current topic, which in 2023 was also discussed by Czech beneficiaries and members of the TC Prague RMA FINPRA working group. The conclusions from their meeting (what worked in lump sum projects according to their experience, what did not, and what are the recommendations) can be found here.

Following subsequent feedback from beneficiaries, it appears that a number of projects have managed to negotiate and justify the requested level of personal costs, thus avoiding the proposed budget cuts. We will continue to monitor how the situation develops in the future. However, it is now advisable when compiling budgets for lump sum projects to use the 'Any comments' column to explain and justify significantly higher costs compared to the Dashboard. We will continue to monitor developments in the TC Prague.