The proposal submission process
It is very important that you familiarize yourself with the overall research and innovation grant process by first consulting the How to participate page on the Funding & Tenders Portal. There you will find a wealth of information, including the Online Manual and numerous Reference Documents, the Participant register, and a comprehensive set of support documentation. Please read through all these resources prior to starting your Submission process.
Proposal submission preparatory checklist
In preparation for your online application submission process, you must go through the following steps:
- Decide on the funding opportunity that you want to apply for. Funding Opportunities are categorised as Calls, Topics and Types of Actions.
- Select your Participants. Most calls require a consortium. Relevant information can be found on the Funding & Tenders Portal.
- Register as a user in the European Commission Authentication Service (EU Login). See How to authenticate with EU Login for more information.
- All organisations participating in a proposal must register in the Participant register through the Funding & Tenders Portal and receive a Participant Identification Code (PIC). Additional information is available in Register an organisation.
All organisations participating need to be registered. There is no need for the organisation to have been validated previously by the European Commission, since the validation of the organisations in consortia happens only when your proposal has been selected for funding.
Quick steps to the online submission process
The following basic tasks summarise in the online submission process:
Log into the Funding & Tenders Portal and select your topic.
These are actions you perform before actually creating your proposal. See How to authenticate with EU Login for support on logging in and Find a call to see how to select a topic.
Create a draft for your proposal.
Manage Participants (i.e. proposal consortium). The participants will be invited to the process by the system.
Edit the proposal draft form.
Edit the proposal form and complete all required information. Engage the other participants to maintain their organisation contacts and the details in the corresponding sections of the proposal form Part A. This task is explained in Proposal forms.
Upload Part B and the rest of annex files and submit your proposal.
Additional to the Part A (main proposal form), all calls require a so called Part B. This is a set of templates specific to the call that you will need to download, complete and upload back in your proposal. This task is explained in Proposal forms.
For submitting the proposal, see Submit.
Following submission, you can update, download or withdraw your proposal until closure date is reached.
While the call remains open, you can always update your proposal and submit again. Please remember that, after submitting, any changes to the proposal will require that you submit it again.
Accessing your draft and submitted proposals
You can access your saved proposal drafts as well as your submitted proposals at any time, from the Proposals page in the Funding & Tenders Portal (you must be logged in).
Two-factor authentication for the Submission System
If you have enabled two-factor at the level of the Portal, you will be presented with a Portal screen asking to authenticate with two-factor or to disable it, when:
- clicking on Start Submission to start the proposal for the first time.
- accessing a draft proposal from the Proposals section on the Portal via the Edit draft Action.
- taking any action from the Proposals section on the Portal (Delete Proposal, View Submitted)
- accessing the Part A form (i.e. edit form button in the Proposal Forms step, only for calls running on the Top-aligned Menu Forms, no applicable to calls running on the Left-aligned Menu Forms):
- exiting the Part A form (i.e. Save and close button within the form)
In all cases, if you authenticated with two-factor on the Portal and the session did not expire, when clicking on authenticate with two-factor in the presented screen, you will be redirected to the submission system without a need for further authentication. Otherwise, you will have to authenticate using two-factor.
For support on setting up your two-factor authentication in your Portal account, please see Two-factor authentication in the Funding & Tenders Portal.
Contact and support
For any IT-related problems that you might experience with the submission system, please contact the IT Helpdesk using the form below, and selecting the domain Submission of proposals:
IT Helpdesk contact form in the Funding & Tenders Portal
Once you have started the submission process, additional contact information is available at the different screens of the wizard.