We won and all that. Celebration is in order, we’ll make a separate post. We still have several problems to solve. The first one is that the consortium is, at the moment, not ready to enter into a grant agreement with the European Commission. There are three things we need to do:
All partners need to complete their validation. At the time of writing, only two partners are duly validated: the University of Bordeaux and the City of Milano. Everyone else, including Edgeryders, needs to take further steps. Please look in your mailboxes for messages from Beneficiary-Register-noreply@ec.europa.eu and do what they ask you to. I am hard at work on it myself. Note that this is urgent. We have four weeks starting on Friday 14th August to prepare the Draft Agreement: and one of the steps, appointing a LEAR (Legally Appointed Representative), involves sending paper documents to Brussels.
Edgeryders, as consortium coordinator, needs to undergo financial validation. This is not trivial for a startup company; you will recall our preference was for one of the academic partners to act as coordinator. Anyway, working on that too.
We will need to make some decisions for stuff that goes into the grant agreement – and that means now. I am calling a consortium meeting on Tuesday 25th at 10.00. More information is coming. Call me if you want to touch base before then.
I’m the LEAR for WeMake and my account is being upgraded. I’m waiting for a snail mail with my PIN. In the meanwhille “due to tech. reason” I can’t enter into the platform
WeMake is validated as Org (seen on the platform) but we did’nt receive the same mail as Marco received.
Regarding our difficulties with the Registrar that I mentioned during the conference call:
(The Foundation for Economic and Business History Research) is a research institute at Stockholm School of Economics, but a separate legal entity.
In Sweden, foundations are, if the statutes do not state otherwise, (the statutes must be approved by the Authorities) non-profit organizations. There is however no legal form “not profit” in Sweden, but for-profit organizations (foundations or other corporate entities) are registered as such. The non profit status is therefore deduced e contrario.
Our problem is that the EU demands a document stating that we are a non-profit. As far as I know there is no official documents available that I could use to prove that we are not for profit (the combination of our approved statutes and a statement from the tax authority of not being subject to corporate tax or VAT was not sufficient). It might be possible to get a statement from some official that the registry works the way it works, or a statement from some non-official. We are presently trying to figure out how to get such a statement.
I have spoken with the local Horizon 2020 representative in Sweden and she recommended the combination of tax-registration and statutes that I already had used - and that the EU explicitly rejected.
However, we cannot be the first non-profit foundation (or organization) that the EU have funded historically so there must be a solution.
@Lakomaa apparently you are good. According to the person we are talking to:
REA informed us that “the non-profit status appears in the status of the organisation”.
@Luciascopelliti and Rossana: I have forwarded to Rossana the Commission’s email about how to appoint a PLSIGN. Basically, this power resides with Lucia, because she is the administrative contact of the City for OpenCare.
Could you please elaborate on this since I do not understand? REA informed us that “the non-profit status appears in the status of the organisation”..
The EU har explicitly requested documents to prove non-profit status. (see my comment above)
Some other countries have special legal corporate forms for non-profits. Sweden to not, but instead defines non-profit organisatition as “an organisation that is not registered as for profit”.
The process is rather interesting for a Commission that preaches e-administration and paperless “everything”.
I sent last week a second copy of the bundle of documents requested, which reached the REA (according to the Swiss post) on Monday. Today I had to ping Marianne Fontayne, who kindly enquired with the REA, which immediately after acknowledged reception of the documents, and started the upgrade of my ECAS account…
Now, after 5hours more or less, I am still waiting for a mail with my PIN, so I am stuck at the same point where @Costantino was 7 days ago… Interestingly the helpdesk has received and closed at once the instance I had opened asking about what would be the ETA of the PIN… I am not sure what to make of this.
Well, I just had posted my update and things rolled a bit. PIN received, account upgraded, and most roles assigned… for reasons unclear to me, I still couldn’t assign any LSIGN/PLSIGN… waiting for a reply from the helpdesk.
I couldn’t but notice that expect for Bordeaux and Milan, no other has so far an associated PLSIGN… shouldn’t it be done by tomorrow?
Thank you for the document uploaded. The documents have been submitted now to our legal department in order to finalise the validation process. I will keep you informed on the validation status in a shortest delay.
I got a reply. It seems that DG Budget accepts Dutch but not Swedish law despite the fact that both Sweden and the Netherlands are EU-members…
Dear Participant,
Please provide us for further documents to be validated by us as non-profit entity. Please let us know if you cannot provide for these, because then we will validate you as for profit entity.
For yours information you have already successfully passed one of the validation phases, done by the DG BUDGET of the European Commission, which based on the documents you have provided validated you as entity with legal personality, as private and non-profit, while assigning FEL key.
However, to finalise the validation, you should get through the validation phase done by REA, where as you see we have stricter rules.
We understand that most likely you are non-profit, but we cannot base our validation on conclusion from the secondary facts. It should be the document which clearly states that you are non-profit entity or if you make profit you do not distribute it but reinvest in activities. Unfortunately, if we have the rule for Netherlands to validate all foundations as non-profit by default, so we do not have yet such rule for Sweden, thus, we shall comply with the strict documented evidences.
For yours information, after being validated, you always could ask for the corrections of the validation facts, based on the new documents you would provide.
I have mailed the EU again asking if it was correct that they did not accept Swedish law.
I have also pointed out that I on the suggestion of the local Horizon 2020 representative have provided references to approproate laws, as well as that she (the representative) had said that the documents I allready had provided had been deemed sufficient in previous cases.
I have got both the official Swedish Horizon 2020 representative and Marianne Fonteyne to put pressure on REA/DG Budget so it might be that they have been successful were I have failed.
