Call for proposals to promote civil society organisations’ awareness of, capacity building and implementation of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights

A child protection policy is a mandatory annex for all participants with activities directly involving children (i.e. persons below age of 18). Hence, each organisation involved in the project and having direct (in person or online) contact with minors needs to supply its own child protection policy.

Public entities (e.g. local authorities, ministries,...) can satisfy this obligation by submitting a declaration from their legal representatives stating that the child protection measures of the public entity are in line with the principles and standards described in the Keeping Children Safe Child Safeguarding StandardsPDF (available at: https://commission.europa.eu/system/files/2023-10/KCS-CS-Standards-ENG-200218.pdf).

Yes. According to the call document, entities without legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, if their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees for the protection of the EU financial interests equivalent to that offered by legal persons (see Article 197(2)(c) EU Financial Regulation 2018/1046).

At the application stage, such applicant should supply documents proving operational capacity (in line with section Operational capacity of the Call document), notably:

• general profiles (qualifications and experiences) of the staff responsible for managing and implementing the project
• description of the consortium participants
• applicants’ activity reports of last year
• list of previous projects (key projects for the last 4 years).

Under the Call CERV-CHAR-LITI, a university is eligible to participate :

• Both as lead applicant/coordinator and co-applicant - if it is a private non-profit body;
• Only as co-applicant – if it is public or profit body. In such cases it may apply only in partnership with private non-profit organisations.

Please note that, although universities can participate in the call, they are not considered as the target applicants of this specific call for proposals. The main target applicants for this call are CSOs.

The EU Survey on Justice, Rights and Values is part of the performance monitoring framework put in place by DG JUST to collect monitoring data and results to ensure the sound management of its funding programmes, public accountability and transparency. It will aim at measuring the quality of the training, mutual learning and awareness-raising events funded under the call for proposals.

Each beneficiary will be requested to ask the attendees of the events organised in the framework of his project to participate in the EU Survey. Beneficiaries will have access to the results and will be able to use them for their project evaluation.

DG JUST will aggregate the results of all the projects financed under the Justice and CERV programmes.

The survey is made of two parts:

• the first one is a usual satisfaction questionnaire aiming at measuring the quality and the impacts of the event organised;
• the second one intends to gather attendees’ perception of the values promoted by the Justice and CERV programmes and measure attendees’ awareness of the different instruments used to promote and protect rights and values.

The following personal data is collected if the respondent agrees:

• name and surname, gender, age category and e-mail address of the respondent,
• the name type and of the organisation on whose behalf the respondent is contributing, and the country of establishment

Protection of personal data is ensured all along the process. The respondent can refuse to give these data but just give his/her answer to the question in an anonymised way.

No. Affiliated entities must fulfil the same conditions for participation and funding as beneficiaries; i.e. comply with the eligibility and non-exclusion criteria applying to beneficiaries. For the CERV-CHAR-LITI Call, affiliated entities must be formally established in an EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories - OCTs). Furthermore, affiliated entities must demonstrate a legal link or capital link to the beneficiary. This link should be neither limited to the action nor established for the sole purpose of the implementation of the action. Please refer to art. 8 of the CERV Model Grant Agreement.

Yes, Associated Partners can be based in third countries. Importantly however, under the CERV-CHAR-LITI Call activities must take place in any of the eligible countries (EU Member States and OCTs). Associated Partners are entities which participate in the action, but without the right to charge costs or claim contributions. Since they participate without funding, they do not need to be validated. Please refer to art. 9.1 of the CERV Model Grant Agreement.

Yes, even only one of the consortium beneficiaries / partners can assume the full co-financing of 10% of the total eligible costs of the project.

There is no maximum amount to apply for under this Call. However, the applicants should have sound and appropriate operational and financial capacity to carry out the action with the proposed budget.

In the CERV-CHAR-LITI Call, travel, accommodation and subsistence costs MUST be declared using unit costs according to Annex 2a of the Grant Agreement. To apply the correct unit costs, please refer to the opening date of your call — the unit costs that you must use for your grant will always depend on the date on which the call for proposals was opened. For full reference, please consult the latest version of Annex 2a of the CERV Model Grant Agreement, which contains the official and complete list of applicable travel (C1a), accommodation (C1b), and subsistence (C1c) unit costs for this call.

Volunteers costs may be added to the budget in the form of a prefixed unit cost (per volunteer, calculated using the unit costs set out in Annex 2a of the CERV Model Grant Agreement) and thus allow you to benefit from the volunteers’ work for the grant (by increasing the amount of reimbursement up to 100% of the normal costs, i.e. cost categories other than volunteers). The costs must comply with the eligibility conditions set out in Article 6.2.A.5 of the CERV Model Grant Agreement. In particular, caps must be applied to limit the amounts declared for volunteers' work or the amount of the total EU contribution, as follows:

- costs for volunteers may not exceed the maximum amount for volunteers for the action (which corresponds to 50% of the total (ineligible and eligible) project costs and contributions estimated in the proposal);

- costs for volunteers may not exceed the maximum amount for volunteers for each beneficiary set out in Annex 2;

- costs for volunteers may not make the maximum EU contribution to costs higher than the total eligible costs without volunteers.

All CERV and JUST calls define their award criteria under section 9. Award criteria of the Call document. Call-specific requirements are outlined in its section 2. Objectives — Themes and priorities — Activities that can be funded — Expected impact. Moreover, additional drafting instructions are included in Part B of the application form.

Applicants must be mindful of all the above parameters, while preparing their proposals.

Practice shows that proposals surpassing the minimum overall quality threshold of 70 points (and which can be considered for funding) are those with:

clear and direct response to the call’s objectives;

a strong focus on issue(s) in which there is a general interest at national / EU-level;

a clearly established link with the EU policy priorities;

clearly defined and realistic project’s objectives, which then translate into concrete activities supported by a clear methodology and in practical and useful outputs;

the potential to have a real impact on the target group(s). This should come hand in hand with a well-defined and appropriate choice of the target group(s) by the project partners bearing in mind the need to have access to these target groups to involve them actively and meaningfully in the project design and its activities;

a good prospect for sustainability and/or long-term impact lasting beyond EU funding (e.g., the project results have a clear potential to be used by the partners and other relevant target groups at national/EU level in their daily practices; changes will continue to resonate after the project ends);

meaningful partnership composition, fit for achieving proposal objectives, where partners have experience in the field, access to the target group(s) and support of relevant public authorities;

all relevant cross-cutting aspects (e.g., respect to EU values, child protection principles, gender mainstreaming perspective, data protection rules, etc.) appropriately covered and clearly described – as these are often only briefly touched upon by applicants. Hence, properly addressing these can really make a difference; and

innovative solution(s) proposed (i.e., featuring new or alternative approaches to recurrent or new problem(s)) or covering geographical areas where the type of activity proposed by the project is clearly missing).

The degree of fulfilment of the above characteristics can differentiate good proposals from the excellent ones.

There is no template format for the CVs. Hence, applicants may use Europass CV or any other CV format.

We encourage applicants to submit CVs, as all other annexes in English. Nevertheless, they can be submitted also in any EU official language.

NO. Applicants are asked NOT to delete any instructions in the document or any formal sections of the application. Formatting rules should be abided (i.e., Arial 9 points as minimum font size to fill-up the application). Any alterations of the application template must be avoided, to prevent the risk of inadmissibility of the application.

No, there is no obligation to submit a letter of support. Nevertheless, letters of support may be included as an optional annex with the view to foster overall quality of the application.

There is no formal template for letters of support and they can be submitted in any EU official language.

The KPI tool allows the Commission to systematically and reliably collect data related to the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of the CERV and Justice programmes.

The previously used “Part C (KPI)” form has been recently replaced by the “KPI tool”. The KPI tool is designed to collect data on the number of persons (male/female/non-binary) participating as attendees to – or that are reached by – a specific activity.

The same KPI tool is used throughout the whole project lifecycle, starting from the stage of proposal submission (SEP) and, if selected, continuing with grant agreement preparation (GAP) and reporting stages (REPA).

Data is preloaded from SEP (submission) to GAP (grant preparation) and from GAP to REPA (reporting); project coordinators can update data from estimates (at application stage) to actual data (at reporting).

When preparing their application, applicants indicate two types of information (i.e. two fields):

1.The type of project.

2.The indicators on the number of persons reached by 3 main types of activities.

1. First field “Type of project” (main activity)

The projects funded under the CERV and the Justice programmes usually include different types of activities. To contribute to the Commission own reporting duties, applicants are requested to classify their project according to its main set of activities (i.e. the main mean to reach the objective). Even if several types of activities will be implemented, applicants must choose one of the five “labels” amongst the given options: mutual learning and exchange of good practices, training, ICT tools, awareness-raising information and dissemination, analytical activities. Only one choice is allowed. This does not change the nature of the project and does not prevent to implement a mix of activities, but it allows for an easier Commission reporting.

2. Second field “Output, result and impact indicators”

This second field aims at recording the number of persons participating in or reached by three types of activities: training, awareness-raising and mutual learning.

A project can foresee different types of activities under the main one. For instance, an analytical project could include an expert workshop (mutual learning) and an information event (awareness-raising). Therefore, while labelled as “analytical” as type of project in the first field, this second field should be filled in for each type of event targeting participants through training, awareness-raising or mutual learning, which can be chosen independently of the choice made for the type of project. The related activity field can be left empty (i.e. value = 0) only if no such activity is planned or takes place within the framework of the project.

The number of persons by type of activity is cumulative, and it includes also the activities implemented by third parties (i.e. for projects with regranting).

At application stage, these numbers are based on estimates; if the project is selected and awarded a grant, actual data is provided at reporting stage.

Additional definitions:

Training:

Training activities may be classroom training or e-learning courses as well as staff exchanges, study visits, workshops and seminars.

The number of persons reached is the number of trainees who have registered to the training module.

Persons who participate in the preparation of the training (e.g. in the needs assessments or research activity) are not considered as trainees.

Persons who participate in the follow-up of the training (e.g. dissemination activities, conference, etc.) are not considered as trainees.

A person who participates in more than 1 training activities is counted as many times as this person participated in different training activities.

Mutual learning and exchange of good practices:

Mutual learning and exchanges of good practices activities may be meetings, workshops, seminars, webinars, online platforms, expert groups, peer-learning, networking, study visits and all other activities that provide the opportunity to identify and learn from good practices in other Member States, other regions or in other sector of activities.

The number of persons reached is the number of men, women and non-binary individuals directly taking part in the activities.

Persons who participate in the dissemination of the mutual learning activity (e.g. press conferences, information folder receivers, etc.) or people touched by media communication activities (e.g. radio broadcast) are not considered as directly taking part in the mutual learning activity.

A person who participates in more than 1 mutual learning activities is counted as many times as this person participated in different mutual learning activities.

Participants to focus groups fall under this category.

Awareness-raising:

Awareness raising, information and dissemination activities are conferences, press conferences, media campaigns (including online), publications and all activities aimed at raising awareness, informing and promoting the debate in the areas of the programme.

The number of persons reached is the number of men, women and non-binary individuals touched [once or several times by one or several means] by these activities.

There is no binding template for a Child protection policy (CPP), since situation of each organisation is unique. However, it must be covering the four areas (policy, people, procedures, accountability) described in the Keeping Children Safe Child Safeguarding StandardsPDF. Moreover, the CPP must be available online and transparent to everyone who comes in contact with the organisation. It must include clear information about the recruitment of staff (including trainees and volunteers) and include background checks (vetting). It must also include clear procedures and rules to staff, including reporting rules, and continuous training.

The Eurochild Child Protection PolicyPDF is a suitable example.

Yes. However, subcontracting should normally constitute a limited part of the budget. It must be performed by third parties (not by one of the beneficiaries/affiliated entities) and should be justified in the application.

In particular, if subcontracting represents large percentage of the total eligible costs, the applicant must provide solid and convincing arguments in the project description - Part B (e.g. development of important IT compounds essential for project implementation, etc.).

Please note, that some project activities should not be subcontracted, notably project management/coordination.

The financial capacity check is done only in case a proposal is selected for funding. It is normally performed for all coordinators with exception of public bodies (entities established as public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) and international organisations. If needed, it may also be done for affiliated entities. Before the grant agreement preparation, the applicants will be approached by the Commission with the list of documents to supply.

For more information consult Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity AssessmentPDF, which provides guiding principles concerning financial capacity check in its part IV. RULES ON FINANCIAL CAPACITY ASSESSMENT (pp. 21-26).

Yes. After completing the registration of an organisation (and obtaining a PIC), the Self-registrant role will be assigned to the user logged into EU Login at the time of registration. The Self-registrant is allowed to access the PIC in the Funding & Tenders Portal and update the organisation data.