Complaints about proposal rejection

If you believe that the rejection of your proposal was based on an error in the selection procedure, you can submit a complaint (following the deadlines and procedures set out in the evaluation result letter).

Generally, the means of redress are the following:

• request for admissibility/eligibility or evaluation review (redress review) — within 30 days of receiving the letter
• for decisions by EU executive agencies: request for review of legality under Article 22 of Regulation 58/2003 — within 1 month of receiving the letter (using the Article 22 complaints form template)
• action for annulment under Article 263 TFEU — within 2 months of receiving the letter.

  You are free to choose any of the above means of redress. However, in the interest of good administration and procedural efficiency, it is recommended to use first the available administrative review procedures (if any). The objective of these procedures is to re-examine the circumstances of the selection procedure and to reach a final decision on your application. Deadlines for further redress will therefore run as from when you receive our reply with the final position.

Please note that notifications which have not been opened within 10 days after sending are considered to have been accessed and that the deadlines will be counted from opening/access (see Portal Terms and Conditions).

Complaints will be subject to the following conditions:

• Complaints must focus on aspects concerning the evaluation of the proposals (e.g. admissibility or eligibility checks, evaluation procedure, etc), not their merits. Thus, applicants can raise procedural irregularities, factual errors, manifest errors of assessment or abuse of powers (e.g. lack of coherence between scores and comments, lack or inadequate reasoning of the conclusions, the existence of a conflict of interests, exceeding the limits of discretion, etc). Mere repetitions of the content of the proposal or disagreements with the result or reasoning of the technical evaluation will not be considered.
• Only one request for review per proposal will be considered. The request cannot refer to the evaluation of proposals submitted by other applicants or under different or previous calls.
• Review requests will not always necessarily also lead to a re-evaluation of your proposal (new technical evaluation with new group of evaluators). The administrative review procedure will re-examine your case, but a re-evaluation will be decided only if your complaint demonstrates that the procedural irregularity, factual error, manifest error of assessment or abuse of powers affects the decision on whether to fund the proposal. Thus, for example, a problem relating to one of the evaluation criteria will not lead to a re-evaluation if, even by adding the maximum points under this criterion, the final score of the proposal would still remain below the threshold for funding.
• Re-evaluations will be made on the proposal as it was originally submitted; no additional information will be admitted. Re-evaluations will be partial (limited to the criterion affected by the error) or full (when the whole evaluation has been recognized as flawed)

— depending on the case. They may be assigned to the same evaluation panel or a new one, depending on the internal procedures of the Granting Authority.

• The score following a re-evaluation may be lower than the original score.
• All requests for review will be treated as confidential.

Please pay attention to who took the formal decision and who the complaint must be addressed to. If a decision was taken by an EU executive agency or other EU body, both redress review and applications for annulment must be directed against that agency/body (NOT against the European Commission). Only Article 22 complaints must be addressed to the respective Directorate-General of the Commission (parent DG of the executive agency).
In case you consider that there has been maladministration on our part, you can also address a complaint to the European Ombudsman — within 2 years after you became aware of it AND after having used all the means of administrative redress available (redress and Article 22 request, if any).