Registration process overview

The registration process enables you to enter the required data in order to obtain a PIC (Participant Identification Code) for your organisation. Once you have obtained your PIC, you will able to initiate a proposal using this code. All participants need to have registered before preparing the proposal.

After completing the registration of an organisation, it will be displayed in your list of organisations when logging in the Funding & Tenders Portal. This list includes registered organisations, but also other organisations you used in the past, even if you did not register them:

The default status for your organisation, when registering it, will be Declared. Your organisation does not need to be validated if you are not participating in any project, so an organisation can be given in the proposal stage even if its status is just Declared.

The validation of the organisation is triggered only if the proposal in which you are participating has been successfully evaluated for a grant agreement. Through this process, the Central Validation Service will contact each of the participants and request to provide official supporting documents. The documents will be provided via the Participant register, which will remain the only communication channel between the Central Validation Service and the participants. The validation process takes place only once, except if the organisation has undergone changes which require new support documents since last time it was validated.

The validation is always triggered automatically and linked to the participation in a selected proposal or to changes in the registered data involving a need for document validation. There are no on-demand validation options, the system will trigger the event when applicable.

The registration process consists of 6 steps. See Registration steps for a whole explanation on how to register an organisation.

Why registering my organisation?

Before applying for funding, all organisations (partners) involved in the project must first be registered with the European Commission. When an organisation does not have legal personality, their representatives must prove they have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on behalf of the organisation and that the organisation has financial and operational capacity equivalent to that of legal persons. The registration is, therefore, a prerequisite for participation in any proposal.

You can check if your organisation is already registered on the Funding & Tenders Portal page, see below how to search for organisations in the database.

How to check if an organisation has been already registered?

In the Participant register page, click on Find a registered organisation before clicking on Register your organisation:

To make sure that your organisation has not already been registered in the Participant register, search for organisations by clicking the Find a registered organisation button. Then, search for organisations, enter the name or a part of the name. You may restrict results by selecting a specific country or expanding the advanced search by clicking on All filters and applying further filters to the search criteria. Then, click on View results to display the matches:

Results are displayed at the bottom of the page. To restart your search with different search criteria, click the Clear All button.

If you do NOT find your organisation, go back to the Participant register page and click on the Register your organisation button.

Who can register an organisation?

In the Participant register, you can register your own organisation or also an organisation you work for. When registering, you will be automatically considered the contact person, but you may provide additional contact persons during the registration process.

The person registering the organisation will receive the Self-registrant role, which allows to perform updates in the data of the organisation, provide documents, register a bank account, etc. Additional contact persons will also receive the same role and rights. Once a LEAR has been appointed and validated, these Self-registrant roles will be automatically revoked, and only the Account administrator and the LEAR will be able to update the data of the organisation. For more information about the roles, see Roles and access rights.

Data updates

After completing the registration of an organisation (and obtaining a PIC), the Self-registrant role will be assigned to the user logged into EU Login at the time of registration. The Self-registrant is allowed to access the PIC in the Funding & Tenders Portal and update the organisation data. To provide additional contact persons, other than the ones provided when registering the PIC, consult Access management of your organisation.

After the validation of the organisation, a Legal Entity Appointed Representative (LEAR) needs to be appointed for the respective organisation. From that moment, the Self-registrants will not have access anymore to the PIC. The LEAR will be able to appoint an Account administrator, who will have access and maintain the data of the PIC (consult the Online Manual - LEAR appointment and validation - and the Roles and access rights pages for more information about this process).

Organisation states

Non-valid

When first registered the organisation is non-valid, a state that encompasses the Declared state shown in the F&T portal. While in this state, the organisation has not been validated , there is no assurance of data quality and it is not registered in the Commission accounting system. It may be used in a call or tender subject to a future validation. Most organisations remain in this state indefinitely.

Valid

Having been selected for a grant or tender, the organisation is validated by the Central Validation Service (CVS). During this validation the data provided is checked and if necessary updated to reflect the document status of the organisation as a legal entity and is linked to the Commission accounting system either as a new registration or a link to a previously registered entity. If this validation is normally complete, the organisation will become Valid.

Deprecated

During the validation process, it may be discovered that the legal entity or a parent of the legal entity is already registered. In this case the PIC is marked as a duplicate or a specified master PIC and its state becomes Deprecated. The master PIC replaces the PIC in all grant and tender processes.

Suspended

An organisation represented by a valid PIC may be subject to a merge or a take over that results effectively in the dissolution of the current legal entity and the take over of its rights and obligations by another one - a process known as UTRO (Universal Transfer of Rights and Obligations). In this case, the PIC is marked as Suspended with a master PIC specified, that represents the new organisation and replaces the PIC in all grant and tender processes. The master PIC may represent an existing legal entity with a PIC already in PDM or it may be an entirely new legal entity, but in both cases the master PIC must be validated before the UTRO process is completed. As the original organisation has ceased to exist, the legal entity will also be blocked in the Commission accounting system.

Blocked

A legal entity that has ceased to trade, without a transfer of rights and obligations, or that has been blocked by DG BUDG, may be moved to the Blocked state. 

Sleeping

The Sleeping state is deprecated and should not be used unless absolutely necessary. It was used previously temporary for organisations who were non-responsive and whose validation could not proceed. A PIC could be set to Sleeping from any other state and would be automatically set to Sleeping, if the participant had not responded to requests for further information or documents. 

Contact and Support

Select the Guidance & documents / Helpdesk & support menu in the Funding & Tenders Portal:

Click on the IT Helpdesk icon to report any problem related to the Participant register. This will open a contact form where you can enter the details of the problem.

If you have already registered your organisation (i.e. you have followed the registration process and obtained your PIC number), you can send a message to the Central Validation Service from the Messages tab of your Organisation Data Update screen (see Messages).