An audit (Certificate on the Financial Statements, CFS) is the confirmation that all of the costs and revenues accounted for correspond with the requirements of the Grant Agreement.

An audit is only carried out over and above direct project costs of € 325,000 per partner and only at the end of the project.

Under Horizon 2020, a European Commission audit may be carried out up to two years after the final payment.

 More information on European Commission audits.

Preparing and submitting the application are two separate steps that are both done electronically in the Participant Portal. The link for submitting your application can be found in the Participant Portal under the relevant Call → Topic → Submission Service.

The portal leads you through the individual steps for preparing your application. Section A of the application is entered directly. Applicants are advised to download the stored template for Section B of the application. The scope of Section B depends on whether the application and evaluation process contains a single stage or two stages.

When Section B is complete it can be uploaded by the coordinator. The application is only submitted when the coordinator presses the "Submit" button. The application may be revised any number of times and resubmitted via the "Submit a proposal" function. The previous current version will be overwritten each time.

For more information on the Funding & Tender Opportunities Portal, please visit the EU Higher Education Network page.

Please take note of the three fundamental evaluation criteria for project applications in Horizon 2020:

• Excellence
• Impact
• Quality and efficiency of execution

The three criteria are also reflected in the structure of Section B of the application.

The EU has published an Online Manual that provides useful information regarding the planning of projects.

Subcontracts must be explained in detail and justified in the application. They represent a defined project task "action task" that cannot be carried out by the other project participants themselves.

• Indirect costs cannot be charged for subcontracts.
• Subcontracts between project partners are not allowed.

Subcontracts can be included up to a maximum amount of 60,000€. Sums in excess of this are possible if they are absolutely necessary to achieve the project objectives, but must be justified separately and specifically.

Information
In addition to the responsible handling of entrusted personal data, it is also important to keep an eye on the protection of one's own data.

For example, when using search engines, to prevent profiles from being created based on search queries, one can resort to alternative search engines such as startpage or DuckDuckGo. The first example provides Google search results, but interposes itself so that Google does not know who made the query. The second example is another search engine that also provides good search results.

When opening a website, technologies are often used that monitor and track site visitors. Here you can block a large part with so-called add-ons like Ghostery or Disconnect. To get an idea of what happens in the background when you visit a website, you can install "Lightbeam" for the web browser "Google Chrome". This and much more information can also be found on the external website Data Protection Commissioner Info.

Data Protection Officer of the OVGU: Rita Freudenberg, Tel. 0391 67 52499