Information on legal and financial validation for FP7 funding

In order to be able to start an experiment and to officially join the ECHORD Consortium in case a sumbitted proposal  is successful, you need to get registered as well as legally and financially validated following a well-defined procedure outlined by the EU Commission.

First you need to obtain an account at the participant portal (a kind of gateway to serveral applications for proposal writing, negotiating, and running projects): http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/ This registration is unique and can also be used for any regular FP7 proposal. Information can be found at: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/pp_en.html

Each organisation has a uniqie Participant Identification Code (or PIC); to get your PIC, please visit http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/pp-pic_en.html.

If you are not sure whether your organisation already has a PIC code, you can search for it: https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/organisations/register_sec.html

You need to submit some documents for getting legally and financially validated. We kindly ask you to take immediate action here as missing legal validation will block you from being funded under the umbrella of the ECHORD project! Access to all the relevant forms is given under http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/pp-valid_en.html.

In addition to this you will have to appoint a LEAR (Legal Entity Appointed Representative) who will be responsible for providing up-to-date legal and financial data of your organisation for the duration of the programme (http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/pp-lear_en.html).

Validation as a SME

If your company is a private entity please note:  For the sake of maximum funding (75% for research and technological development acvtivities) it is worth to check whether you can get validated under the status of SME (small or medium-sized enterprise). To be granted this status, though, you need to fulfill specific criteria in terms of your maximum number of employees, your annual turnover, your annual balance-sheet and your legal status. The SME definition can be found here:
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/facts-figures-analysis/sme-definition/index_en.htm
SMEs can also apply for a specific indirect cost method, the so-called “special flat rate” with 60% of most of the direct costs.

Central Validation Team of the European Commission

For more information and a confirmation that you comply with these criteria, please contact the Central Validation Team (CVT) under
REA-URF-VALIDATION@ec.europa.eu.