Annotated Grant Agreement 2.0: what’s new in 2025?
As happened in 2023, this April 1st 2025 we again had the pleasure of welcoming a new version of the Annotated Grant Agreement (AGA) on April Fool’s Day. After six 1.X versions (and more than half of the Horizon Europe programme already over), we are finally on version 2.0.
One might expect big changes, but in fact version 2.0 is no revolution. Let’s take a look at the most relevant adjustments and new examples.
First of all, we found some clarifications on one of our favourite topics: personnel cost calculations. If you ever considered charging the personnel costs related to the preparation of the Final Report after the end of the project, you probably wondered which daily rate and ceiling to apply. Good news! The new AGA finally clarifies the methodology to be used.
Other important clarifications have also been included in terms of daily rate calculation for freelancers (natural persons with direct contract with the beneficiary), and in terms of calculations for annual seasonal fluctuations in working hours as may happen in a seasonal work contract or in cases of “summertime” regulations.
Secondly, the new AGA brings us some clarifications and examples implicitly connected with the new lump sum scheme. In terms of responsibilities for project Coordinators, for instance, we can find clarifications related to the recovery of the pre-financing in case of early termination of the project. The AGA clarifies that if the Coordinator did not get the pre-financing because it was used to cover another partner’s debt (“offset amount”), then the Coordinator should not be the one responsible for paying that money back to the EC. This would seem obvious at first sight, but if stated so clearly in this new version of AGA, it evidently reflects a real preoccupation from project Coordinators.
On the other hand, in Annex 5 we can also find clarifications related to the reporting requirements for record keeping and exploitation of results, namely: “beneficiaries should keep appropriate documentation about the steps taken” for the exploitation of project results. No financial records and audits, but more attention to transversal obligations such as exploitation definitely rings a “lump sum” bell.
Finally, a very interesting link has been added to Annex 5 in relation to restricted calls, meaning those calls subject to restrictions due to strategic assets, interests, autonomy or security of the EU and its Member States. In such cases, beneficiaries must ensure that any cooperation with entities located in countries that are not eligible does not affect the interests and security of the EU; this obligation may entail checks from the EC validation services on ownership and control – OCA. The link should in principle provide more guidance on this type of checks, that are still quite confusing and very time-consuming. However, once we click on it full of hope… a white page that display a small “coming soon” sentence appears! Is that maybe the Fool’s Day joke hidden in the new AGA?
To know more about clarifications and examples in the version 2.0 – do not hesitate to get in touch with us at hello@getpolite.eu