Technical Assistance for Disaster Risk Management (Track 1)

National technical institutions, provided they are a public entity with competences in civil protection and disaster risk management, can apply as lead applicants.

The lead applicant/beneficiary needs to be a national authority established in one of the eligible countries. Other partners should be legal entities and be established in the same country as the lead partner. This includes private legal entities, universities, other public bodies (including local or regional administration), non-governmental organisations, or else, as long as the main condition mentioned earlier is met.

The composition of the consortium can be changed through an amendment procedure after the signature of the grant agreement, respecting the grant agreement and the agreed contribution of the project.

Countries which are not part of the European Union do not need to follow EU public procurement rules as the EU Public Procurement Directive (2014/24/EU) is not applicable to them. On the other hand, all grant receiving ‘Contracting authorities’ (as defined by the EU Public Procurement Directive), inside and outside the EU, must apply their national law on public procurement.

Subcontractors are physical or legal persons who have been selected to deliver a service following an appropriate public procurement procedure.

The names of the people to be subcontracted do not need to be included in the application form Part B. In fact, we recommend not to include the names in order to avoid unnecessary amendments should there be a change in subcontracted personnel.

100 % of the action can be subcontracted except for the reporting and overall coordination. The project beneficiary maintains overall responsibility for the project and is the owner of the deliverables from the project.

Coordination is the responsability of the lead partner. The lead partners in Track 1 must always be a national authority with competences in civil protection or disaster risk management.

Track 1 proposals can be submitted by single applicants or by consortia.

According to the General Model Grant Agreement, the work of volunteers may be declared as personnel costs, as long as they are declared eligible in the specific call’s conditions. In the case of the "Technical Assistance for Disaster Risk Management (Track 1)" call, volunteer costs may only be related to per diems for transportation and meals, and should be allocated to travel and subsistence costs. They are not considered as personnel costs, and they are explicitly excluded from being eligible as unit costs.

Only depreciation costs related to the purchase of equipment are eligible costs under these grants.

Yes, a flat rate of 7 % for indirect costs is applicable by default (see Excel Detailed budget template) and should not be removed from the template. Only one set of detailed budget tables is needed and consistency between the financial information (in the consolidated budget table and detailed budget table) is always expected. The indirect costs are automatically added to the project.

Projects must budget with unit costs for travel, accommodation and subsistence, as well as for small and medium sized enterprise owners’ remuneration without salary. These tables lay down the amounts and calculation methods that must be used. Only travel costs not foreseen in the annex may be included as actual costs. For more information see Grant Agreement Article 6 and Annex 2 and 2a.

Please note that, indeed, the use of actual costs for personnel is possible. The use of average personnel costs (unit cost according to usual cost accounting practices) is only possible for entities that consistently calculate average rates for their staff, as indicated in the Annotated Grant Agreement.

The competent national civil protection authority of the country of the applicant should sign a letter of support, unless the applicant is a national civil protection authority, in which case the letter is not needed.

A template is provided for the letter of support under the "Topic conditions and documents" section of the call page on the Funding & Tenders portal.

In case of doubt on who to contact in your respective national civil protection system to facilitate a letter of support for your project proposal, please consult the information available on the DG ECHO website or contact us at: ECHO-CP-P-P@ec.europa.eu

The Key Performance Indicators annex should be submitted with the proposal and together with the final report. In the proposal, target values should be provided, while the achieved values should be reported together with the final report.

LEAR appointment is not a condition for the submission of a proposal, but it must be completed before the signature of the grant agreement.

An indicative timeline can be found on the Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network platform at https://civil-protection-knowledge-network.europa.eu/UCPM-Track-1-call2026. These dates, except for the call opening and deadline, are not binding and we aim to update them if and when changes occur.

Yes. A project should target a minimum of one of the general and one of the specific objectives but could also target several objectives from each category.

The project starting date and duration will be fixed in the Grant Agreement (Data Sheet, point 1). Normally the starting date will be in the month following the grant agreement signature. The starting date may be delayed for up to four months, for duly justified reasons, although never later than 1 March 2027. We estimate that grant agreements could be signed at the earliest in October 2026, therefore the earliest starting date is most likely November 2026.

No. The final report – with its two parts: technical and financial – will be presented in the final reporting and payment phase. The final report does not count as a deliverable.