This information is an excerpt of the Guideline for Applicants v 1.1 published by the EIC. It is meant for easy reference and does not substitute a full review of the Guidelines for Applicants, which can be found here.
If you submit a Phase-2 proposal for one of the cut-off dates, you should ensure that you are available and able to travel to Brussels during the corresponding interview weeks as indicated below.
For 2020
- interview week for 1st cut-off date: 17-21 February;
- interview week for 2nd cut-off date: 4-8 May;
- interview week for 3rd cut-off date: 29-3 July;
- interview week for 4th cut-off date: 16-20 November.
(updated as of 11.11.2019)
You are allowed to send a maximum of three company representatives to the interview, preferably the CEO or, alternatively, other senior staff.
Only staff legally employed by the applicant company or, in their absence, major shareholders are allowed to participate in the interview. Representation by third parties (i.e. external advisors or sub-contractors) is forbidden. When appointing a person to represent the company in the interview, you are also required to send documents that prove their link with the company (i.e. employment contracts, most recent salary slip, company statutes or act of establishment).
If the appointed representatives fail to appear, or if no one is appointed, the interview will remain scheduled and proceed only on the basis of the documents already provided.
Financial contribution to interview costs
In order to ensure an equal opportunity to all applicants to present their proposal during step 2 of the evaluation of the EIC Accelerator Pilot (SME Instrument) Phase-2, applicants invited to interview will receive a contribution to travel, accommodation and subsistence expenses. The following steps needs to be successfully and timely completed:
- Before the interview, create a valid “Expert” type profile on the Funding and Tenders Portal. Once the profile has been created, the system will generate this type of reference: EX2019X341258. The number should be provided together with other supporting documents in the form you will be requested to fill in preparation to your participation to the interview and to send by the deadline mentioned in the communication.
- After the interview, you will receive a request to fill and submit the forms and supporting documents for the LEF (Legal Entity Form) and BAF (Bank Account Form). This must be done by the deadline given.
- After the validation of LEF and BAF, you will receive a notification to submit your cost claim. This must be done within 30 days following this notification.
If you fail to perform any of the above-mentioned steps by the deadline given, you will not be considered for financial contribution.
The Commission Decision detailing the coverage and amount is available from the following link. Please note that only applicants actually participating in the interview (i.e. pitching and Q&A) may benefit from the EU financial contribution.
Interview format
The interview process includes the jury interview and panel review as described below.
The interview will last no longer than 30 minutes, and includes:
- 10 minutes (maximum) of presentation supported by the pitch document (slide format in pdf) submitted with the proposal (Annex 5);
- 20 minutes of questions and answers to clarify aspects of the proposal evaluated in Step 1, in particular those under 'Award Criteria' including the commercialisation strategy, the team/company, the technological feasibility, the projected results and the market creating potential. There will be no pre-set questions, the jury may ask any question related to the proposal.
Please note that in the case of blended finance proposals, additional time may be granted for the questions and answers in order to address aspects of the proposals related to the equity request.
After the interview and the departure of the company representatives, the expert-evaluators in the jury collectively prepare the Evaluation Summary Report (ESR) for the proposal in step 2 that includes (1) the evaluation outcome and (2) specific comments related to the three award criteria.
The outcome of the interview is either an A-mark – proposal proposed for funding – or a B-mark – proposals to be rejected. For proposals receiving an A, the decision may refer to the initial funding required (i.e. grant or blended finance) or to a blended finance offer if the applicant requested grant only but gave its consent to receive a blended finance offer.
Panel review:
The panel is composed of all the expert-evaluators who participated in the jury interviews. The panel will review all the proposals from the interview stage to ensure that the interview juries have been consistent in their evaluations. The panel may adjust scores or change the comments if necessary.
The panel review will approve a panel report that will comprise the Evaluation Summary Report for each proposal in step 2 and a ranking list.
Ranking:
The ranking list is determined by the Panel report and contains:
- proposals proposed for funding – final score A;
- proposals rejected due to insufficient budget – final score B.
Feedback to applicants
Approximately 9 weeks after the original cut-off date, via the F&T portal, applicants will receive either:
- an invitation to prepare a grant agreement if the proposal is on the list of proposals to be funded. Only proposals that have passed all quality thresholds and received an "A" mark are proposed for funding; or
- a rejection letter if the proposal cannot be funded because the available budget is insufficient.
Applicants requesting or offered blended finance will receive the same information as for the grant component. Additionally, if they are selected, they will receive all the necessary information on the due diligence process to be performed by the EIC Fund.