Democratic transition, (re-)building and strengthening society based on the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights

In principle, international organisations are eligible applicants independently of their seat/representation site. However, they must ensure that project activities take place only in the CERV eligible countriesPDF resp. in the JUST eligible countriesPDF while respecting all other eligibility requirements outlined in the Call.

As indicated in the Call Document, organisations (applicant and partners) must be established in eligible countries. International organisations are also eligible, even if established in non-eligible countries. However, the project activities must take place only in eligible countries. For the calculation of the lump sum, only participants coming from eligible countries can be counted, and this also applies to International Organisations. Participants in an event do not need to ‘represent’ a partner, they can also come from other eligible countries than the ones involved in the consortium.

Yes. Provided that all the eligibility criteria laid down in the call document are respected, both public and private legal entities are eligible applicants for this call. Lead applicants ("Coordinators") can only be non-profit public or private legal entities, whereas co-applicants ("Partners") can be both non-profit and for profit public and private legal entities.

Beneficiaries (BEN) are the legal entities involved in the action that are parties to the grant agreement. As signatories of the grant agreement, they are fully responsible towards the granting authority for implementing the project and for complying with all the obligations stated in the grant agreement.

Affiliated entity (AE) is an organisation that has a link with a beneficiary (in particular a capital or legal link), which is NOT limited to the action or established for the sole purpose of implementing it. Affiliated entities participate in the action with similar rights and obligations as the beneficiaries (obligation to implement action tasks and right to charge costs and claim contributions). Since affiliated entities receive a part of the grant, they must comply with all the call conditions and be validated (just like beneficiaries).

Associated partners (AP) are the 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.

Attention! Affiliated entities and Associated partners are NOT considered as beneficiaries, because they do not sign a grant agreement. Therefore, they do not count towards the minimum eligibility criteria for consortium composition (if any).

No, there is no binding template under the CERV and the JUST programmes for the written consortium agreement. However, once the proposal is selected for funding, members of consortia must conclude a written consortium agreement.

For more details concerning its content, please consult CERV Model Grant AgreementPDF (p.28-29), CERV Lump Sum Model Grant AgreementPDF (p. 21) resp. JUST LS Model Grant AgreementPDF (p.21) and Annotated Grant AgreementPDF(article 7).

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.

Yes. In order to be eligible for funding, activities can be organized in any of the eligible programme countries and direct participants must be residents of any eligible programme countries.

The minimum number of participants and countries required to be qualify for the pre-fixed lump sums are:

• 25 participants from 1 country (for the in-situ events/lump sums); and
• 101 participants from 2 countries (for the online events/lump sums).

If the number of participants and countries is lower, no financing can be granted for respective lump sum/Work Package.

Please refer to the Lump Sum DecisionPDF with all prefixed amounts and related numbers of participants and countries (tables 1 and 2).

The lump sums for in-situ and online events are based on 2 parameters:

• the number of direct participants: number of participants directly involved in the entire event. If a participant is involved in different activities of the same event, s/he must only be counted once; AND
• the number of eligible countries: number of countries of habitual residence of direct participants. Only eligible countries must be counted.

The grant cannot finance the entire cost of the project, beneficiaries may bear additional costs which are not captured by the Union contribution. As explained in the Decision authorizing the use of lump sums,PDF the contributions amounts have been defined taking into account the principle of co-financing. As respect of the co-financing principle is generally assumed in the context of lump sum, applicants do not have to provide information about sources of funding other than the EU grant, nor they have to specify a co-financing percentage.

It is up to the consortium to decide on the distribution of the lump sums per partner organisation. One lump sum can be split between several partners (e.g. % share) or can be attributed only to one organisation. It is mandatory that the total budget per partner included in the Part A is equal to the total budget in the calculator sheet.

As indicated in the Call Document (section 10), one work package corresponds to one event/lump sum of the budget. WP 1 must therefore correspond to the first event/lump sum of the budget.

For the purpose of this lump-sum based call, WP 1 is not designated for management and coordination activities. Costs related to management and coordination (personnel costs) are covered by the lump sums contribution.

Double funding is not allowed. Therefore, direct participants can be counted only once for the whole event under the same work package, even if they participate in several activities.

In addition, activities involving the same direct participants but belonging to different work packages should in principle not have overlapping time frame (i.e., taking place on the same days or on consecutive days). Should that occur, the same direct participants must be counted only once under one work package.

Yes, they can, as long as direct active participation of citizens/target groups is ensured in the work package, (i.e. involving direct and verifiable participation of the target group(s)) to discuss a thematic defined in advance). In order to be eligible for funding, the total number of direct participants involved in the event must comply with the minimum requirements of participants/countries as set in the lump sum decisionPDF.

As indicated in the Call document, section 6. Eligibility - Project budget, for the call CERV-2025-CITIZENS-REM, The EU grant applied for cannot be lower than EUR 50 000 and there is no upper limit to the grant amount requested/awarded. The grant awarded can be lower than the grant requested.

In order to calculate the budget the applicants must use the lump-sum budget calculator. The lump sum amount must be calculated in accordance with the methodology set out in the Decision authorizing the use of lump sumsPDF, and explanations provided under the section 10 of the call document. The project budget must be consistent with the Part A and Part B of the application, as well as realistic in terms of the needs, financial and operational capacities of the organizations applying.

As per the call document, one event equals to one work package and you should calculate the lump sum per work packages. If you have more work packages than lines in the lump sum calculator, please contact the EACEA-CERV@ec.europa.eu.

Please use the Lump-Sum Budget Calculator in Excel format to calculate the budget of your project. The total amount of the Lump-Sum Budget Calculator has to match with the total 'requested grant amount' indicated in the Part A - Section 3 Budget (and divided by partners of the consortium). The two amounts have to be equal.

In the lump sum calculator (budget table), the parameter ‘number of eligible countries’ should take into account participants’ country of residence.

NO. You can submit your proposal and annexes in any official EU language (project abstract/summary should however always be in English). For reasons of efficiency, we strongly advise you to use English for the main part of the application (Part B).

To gender mainstream your proposal, please consider the guiding questions below to integrate a gender perspective into your project:

• Did I conduct a gender equality analysis to assess my project’s design, implementation and impact?
• Did I take into account gender aspects in my needs assessment?
• Will the data and indicators I collect and create be disaggregated by sex?
• Did I include in my proposal a commitment to advance gender equality?
• Did I include in my proposal a commitment to monitor and report on the gender equality results achieved by the project in the evaluation phase?
• Do I plan to create gender-specific indicators to measure the project’s gender equality objectives?

Questions 1-5 are considered basic elements of a gender-mainstreamed proposal. Question 6, is designed for projects, which put gender equality at their core.

Additional guidance can be found on: What is Gender mainstreaming | EIGE (europa.eu) and Gender analysis | EIGE (europa.eu)

NO. The maximum page limit for proposal (Part B) set in the Call document ensures equal treatment of all applicants.

All excess pages detected by the system will be blanked. Therefore, the applicants need to make sure to respect this limitation before converting the application Part B document into a PDF and uploading it via the Submission wizard.

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.

As indicated in the Call Document (section 10 - subsection "Budget categories and cost eligibility rules"), one work package corresponds to one event/lump sum in the Lump-Sum Budget Calculator. Please describe and list your work packages in the same order of the lump sums enumerated in the Lump-Sum Budget Calculator.

In the calls for proposals published under the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) Programme, it is possible for one organisation to submit or participate in 2 (or several) projects. Such organisations are however asked to be attentive to any possible duplication issues that might arise and to ensure that they have sufficient operational and financial capacity to implement both projects in case they are both selected for funding.

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.

No. In case an organisation is working with young people in the age group 18-29, Child protection policy is not needed, since children are considered as persons below age of 18. Please note that terms youth, teenagers or young people without age precision are quite vague. Therefore, the applicants are encouraged to clearly specify the targeted age group in the abstract and all through the proposal.

No. Each project application under the call must address only one topic representing a specific priority. Applicants wishing to apply for more than one topic, must submit a separate proposal under each topic.

The evaluation methodology (evaluation criteria for relevance, quality and impact) is designed to reflect “Rights of the child/Child protection policies” dimension. Consequently, (lack of) attention to rights of a child/child protection policies dimension may have an impact on the score a proposal receives in the evaluation.

Notably, if a project has a direct or indirect impact on children and their rights, the project should address children as rights holders and should ensure their participation in the design and implementation of the project.

As provided by the Decision authorising the use of lump sumsPDF, the lump-sums for events already include the costs related to coordination, management, evaluation, communication, etc.