The Grant Agreement (GA) is the funding agreement concluded between the European Commission and the beneficiaries and specifies the rights and obligations of the contracting parties. It contains important provisions for the implementation of the project such as criteria for the eligibility of costs, reporting and provisions for handling intellectual property rights.
Horizon Europe provides a General Model Grant Agreement (MGA), which is furthermore used for other directly managed programmes by the European Commission.
The majority of the provisions of the GA cannot be altered. Individual details may however be individually agreed with the European Commission during the grant preparation, such as the start of the project and the amount of pre-financing.
The MGA also includes different options. They refer to special provisions that do not apply to all projects. The options applicable to an individual project are explicitly identified in the GA.
Specific rules for particular project types such as ERC, EIC, co-funded Partnerships are furthermore indicated in Annex 5 to the MGA.
The MGA also contains "default rules" which may be modified by the consortium in the Consortium Agreement (CA). The beneficiaries may in particular modify the provisions applicable to intellectual property.
A novelty compared to the MGA in Horizon 2020 is the introduction of a so-called data sheet at the beginning of the contract. It contains the most important agreements and details and other provisions of the MGA regularly refer to this data sheet.
Structure of the MGA
- Preamble – Contracting parties
- Data Sheet – Overview of the most important agreements of the contract (e.g. project duration, project participants, maximum grant amount, funding rate(s), budget categories, eligibility of costs, reporting, payments, deadlines)
- Chapter 1 – General (definitions etc.)
- Chapter 2 – Action
- Chapter 3 – Grant
- Chapter 4 – Project implementation (e.g. third parties, rights and obligations during project implementation, conflict of interest, confidentiality and security, ethics, data protection, intellectual property, reporting, record-keeping, payments, controls/audits)
- Chapter 5 – Rejection of costs, grant reduction, suspension of the project implementation/payments, termination of the participation of beneficiaries etc.
- Chapter 6 – Final provisions (calculation of deadlines, amendments, accession of a new beneficiary, applicable law etc.)
The MGA includes the following Annexes:
- Annex 1 – Description of the Action (DoA)
- Annex 2 – Estimated budget
- Annex 2a – Information on unit costs, if applicable
- Annex 3 – Accession Forms, if applicable
- Annex 3a – Declaration on joint and several liability of affiliated entities, if applicable
- Annex 4 – Model for the financial statements
- Annex 5 – Specific rules, if applicable
Information about "amendments" can be found under amendments.
The Annotated Grant Agreement (AGA) provides explanations and examples of all provisions of the MGA and also has the same structure. Please note that important details – in particular about eligibility of costs – can often only be found in these annotations and are not included in the text of the contract.
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