Horizon 2020 – Dissemination During the Lockdown
May 12, 2020
While the budget for Horizon Europe is still being debated, some details about the implementation have already emerged. The rules related to Horizon Europe represent continuity from Horizon 2020 as well as improvements compared to its predecessor. One of the changes is driven by the need to provide better cooperation with other EU-funded programmes.
This means that the financial rules of Horizon Europe will be in line with those rules and procedures that are common across EU programmes. The model grant agreement of Horizon Europe will have the same main provisions as other funding programmes while providing for the specificities of research and innovation.
A major change in financial rules is related to personnel costs. Actual personnel costs in Horizon 2020 are based on hourly rates, ie. the number of hours worked multiplied by the hourly rate is the most general way to charge personnel costs on projects.
According to the draft model grant agreement, Horizon Europe will use daily rates rather than hourly rates:
{daily rate for the person multiplied by number of actual days worked on the action (rounded up or down to the nearest half-day)}.
The daily rate must be calculated as:
{annual personnel costs for the person divided by 215}
The number of actual days declared for a person must be identifiable and verifiable.
With this new approach, timesheets will be replaced by monthly declarations.
Even though stakeholders welcome the intention to simplify rules, this particular change raises a number of questions.
- The hour-based calculation is the only method to provide the necessary granularity to be able to charge hours to projects with a high level of precision. If anyone is involved in several projects running in parallel, they need to convert the hours into days.
- This may lead to additional administrative burden rather than reducing it.
- This approach makes it difficult to allocate time across projects simply because the smallest unit is half a day so you need retroactively calculate days over a longer period of time so that the rounding up or down will not cause any distortion to the actual amount time you spend on specific projects.
Horizon Europe is still in the making so these rules may change over time. Check back often to see the news as the implementation plan develops and how they impact proposers and beneficiaries.
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