Supporting intermediary organisations (providing financial support to civil society organisations) working in the fields of gender-based violence and violence against children

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).

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.

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).

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).

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.

Organisations that are not in the list of participating countries can participate as associated partners but not as affiliated entities.

Associated partners 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.

Affiliated entities are organisations that have 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).

Before applying for funding, all organisations involved in the project (all members of the consortia) must first be registered with the EU. See Registration steps for a whole explanation on how to register an organisation.

All information related to registration of an organisation can be found here:webgate.ec.europa.eu

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).

As mentioned on page 5 in the call documentPDF section 0. Introduction:

• One entity can submit only one proposal as coordinator/lead applicant; however, they can also participate in other proposals as partners. The participation as partners is not limited.

If an organisation is coordinator for one proposal and participant in another proposal, the organisation is 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.

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.

Applicants (members of consortia) must provide CVs of core project team as an obligatory annex. CVs should be merged into one document in a PDF format. In case key personnel has not yet been recruited, job description should be provided instead.

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.

There are two types of Lump Sum payment, the CERV-2026-DAPHNE call is 'Lump Sum Type II'. The other type of lump sum is the 'Lump Sum Type I', which is mentioned in the call document as 'prefixed Lump Sum Grants'.

As a consequence, the section '2.6. Cost effectiveness and financial management' needs to be completed for this call.

The table ' Estimated budget — Resources' and the section on 'staff effort' do not need to be completed for this call, please leave the table and corresponding sections empty as the information should be completed in the detailed budget table. If you have subcontracting, the section on subcontracting does need to be completed.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

In the calls for proposals published under the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) Programme, the annual activity report is not needed for public bodies, which also includes public universities.

The Annual Activity Report (AAR) is a document describing the activities of the Applicant in the year preceding the year of application (or the last year available).

There is no binding template for AAR and it is admissible in any EU language.

Please note that AAR is not a financial statement!