The LEAR in Horizon Europe

When the Grant Agreement preparation starts, your project is requested to assign a Legal Entity Appointed Representative (LEAR).

The LEAR is the legal representative of the company. In the EIC Accelerator funding schemes, you may be requested to appoint the CEO of your company as the LEAR.

What does the LEAR do?

The LEAR manages the Funding and Tenders portal and is responsible for all the actions in the Portal. This person can:

• view the organisation’s legal and financial data
• request updates of this information if necessary
• keep an overview of all the proposals/projects/contracts the organisation is involved in
• manage the access rights at organisation-level (and read-only access at project-level)
• appoint the Legal Signatory (LSIGN) and the Financial Signatory (FSIGN). An organisation may have more than one LSIGN and FSIGN.

Being the LEAR does not mean that this person cannot fulfil other project roles. Sometimes the legal representative, the LEAR and the primary coordinator contact is the same person.

It is important to bear in mind that there can only be one LEAR per organisation. If for any reason the appointed person cannot fulfil the role anymore, a new person can be assigned in line with the applicable rules.

How are access rights managed?

Roles are managed at two different levels:

• At the organisation level: roles are linked to the whole organisation and its data (but without any access to the projects/contracts).
• At the project level: project/contract roles are defined first in the proposal, and then transferred to the project/contract when you have been invited to sign with the EU.

An important role at project level is the Primary Coordinator Contact (PCoCo), that is assigned at the project proposal stage. This person is by default the one creating the application in the Portal and thereby becomes the main person responsible for the proposal. During the application phase and before call deadline, the PCoCo may transfer this role to someone else in the application. There can only be one PCoCo per project.

Remember that one user can have several roles at the same time. For instance, the same person can be the PCoCo, the LEAR and the legal or financial signatory.

Roles overview

As mentioned above, the LEAR appoints the Legal Signatory (LSIGN) and the Financial Signatory (FSIGN) at the organisation level. There can be more than one LSIGN and FSIGN, so the company can create a kind of list of potential Legal and Financial Signatories. From this list, the PCoCo can then assign the Project Legal Signatory (PLSIGN) and the Project Financial Signatory for a given project.

The following picture shows the distribution of roles:

The PLSIGN has the right to sign the Grant Agreement (and amendments) and the PFSIGN has the right to sign cost claims/invoices on behalf of the organisation.

Still having doubts about the different roles? Contact us and we’ll help you: hello@getpolite.eu