EU Call for Proposals: Support to Food Safety, Veterinary and Phytosanitary Standards

Deadline: 15 May 2018

The European Union (EU) is seeking proposals from eligible organizations for its program entitled “Support to Food Safety, Veterinary and Phytosanitary Standards”.

The global objective of this call for proposals is to “Establish the institutional and administrative capacities in line with the overall public administration reform agenda to ensure an increased protection of human, animal and plant health at every stage of the food production process.

Objectives

Specific objective 1: To assist the restructuring of the relevant administrative structures and ensure the building of appropriate capacities to implement policy measures and achieve strategic objectives in line with general public administration reform efforts and the EU membership requirements.
Specific objective 2: To raise public awareness ensuring that consumers are adequately informed about their choices, roles and responsibilities, and increasingly demand safe and high-quality food products
Specific objective 3: To help develop the necessary legal and institutional framework and design and implement the required policy measures to ensure the progress toward strategic objectives in the field of food safety, veterinary and phytosanitary standards.

Priorities

The priorities related to specific objectives of this call for proposals are:

Priority 1 – Organizational reform and human resources
Priority 2 –Public awareness and communication
Priority 3 – Acquis adoption and policy implementation capacity

Funding Information

The grant requested under this call for proposals must not exceed EUR 5,000,000.

Eligibility Criteria

Lead applicant
- In order to be eligible for a grant, the lead applicant must:
  - be a legal person, and
  - be a specific type of organisation such as: a Government department, public body, or relevant mandated body of a Government department or public body authority of a European Union Member State in the fields related to this action and
  - be established in a Member State of the European Union (‘For British applicants: Please be aware that eligibility criteria must be complied with for the entire duration of the grant. If the United Kingdom withdraws from the EU during the grant period without concluding an agreement with the EU ensuring in particular that British applicants continue to be eligible, applicants will cease to receive EU funding (while continuing, where possible to participate) or be required to leave the project on the basis of Article 12.2 of the General Conditions1 to the grant agreement.
  - be directly responsible for the preparation and management of the action with the co-applicant(s) and affiliated entity(ies), not acting as an intermediary.
- The lead applicant must declare that the lead applicant himself, the co-applicant(s) and affiliated entity(ies) are not in any of these situations.
- The lead applicant must act with co-applicant(s) as specified hereafter.
Co-applicant(s)
- Co-applicants participate in designing and implementing the action, and the costs they incur are eligible in the same way as those incurred by the lead applicant.
- Co-applicants must satisfy the eligibility criteria as applicable to the lead applicant.
- Civil society organizations (such as non-governmental non-profit organizations and independent political foundations, community-based organizations and private sector non-profit agencies, institutions and organizations and networks) originating from an European Union Member State or from any country eligible under IPA II programme and having experience in the Western Balkans region in the domain pertaining to S.O.2
- At least one Co-applicant must be eligible according to the criteria applicable to the lead applicant and must originate from a different Member States than the lead applicant.
- If awarded the grant contract, the co-applicant(s) will become beneficiary(ies) in the action (together with the Coordinator).
Affiliated entity(ies)
- The lead applicant and its co-applicant(s) may act with affiliated entity(ies)
- Only the following entities may be considered as affiliated entities to the lead applicant and/or to co-applicant(s):
- Only entities having a structural link with the applicants (i.e. the lead applicant or a co-applicant), in particular a legal or capital link.
- This structural link encompasses mainly two notions:
  - Control, as defined in Directive 2013/34/EU on the annual financial statements, consolidated financial statements and related reports of certain types of undertakings:
    - Entities affiliated to applicant may hence be:
      - Entities directly or indirectly controlled by an applicant (daughter companies or first-tier subsidiaries). They may also be entities controlled by an entity controlled by an applicant (granddaughter companies or second-tier subsidiaries) and the same applies to further tiers of control;
      - Entities directly or indirectly controlling the applicant (parent companies). Likewise, they may be entities controlling an entity controlling the applicant;
      - Entities under the same direct or indirect control as the applicant (sister companies).
  - Membership, i.e. the applicant is legally defined as a e.g. network, federation, association in which the proposed affiliated entities also participate or the applicant participates in the same entity (e.g. network, federation, association) as the proposed affiliated entities.