Horizon 2020 Marie Curie - COFUND

General Overview
Eligible Researchers
Certificate on the Financial Statement
Consortium Agreement
Institutional costs
Matching Funds
​Material budget/Training costs and research costs
Overheads
Unit costs
Guidelines & Procedures(link is external)

General Overview

The COFUND scheme aims at stimulating regional, national or international programmes to foster excellence in researchers' training, mobility and career development, spreading the best practices of Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions. This will be achieved by co-funding new or existing regional, national, and international programmes to open up to, and provide for, international, intersectoral and interdisciplinary research training, as well as transnational and cross-sectoral mobility of researchers at all stages of their career.

Eligible researchers

Researchers participating in a COFUND Fellowship programme have to be ‘Experienced researchers’ at the time of recruitment. This means that they are in possession of a doctoral degree or have at least four years of full-time equivalent research experience. The appointed researcher must not have spent more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to their recruitment at the host organisation.
The ERs are recruited under a Fellow status at CERN.

Certificate on the Financial Statement

No CFS (audit certificate) will have to be provided, even when the maximum EC contribution exceeds the threshold of 325,000 €.

Consortium Agreement

COFUND are usually monosite projects. In the event of CERN being involved in a multi-beneficiary COFUND project, CERN will require a Consortium Agreement.

Institutional costs

The EU contribution includes a contribution for Institutional costs. This contribution is of 325 € / month. It must be used towards the management of the programme. The distribution of this budget is detailed in the procedure “Use of the Management budget on a H2020 Marie Curie project” below.

Matching Funds

The EC contribution covers 33% of the salary of a fellow, for 3 years. When recruiting a researcher under a COFUND contract, the department must provide the remaining budget through the fellowship program.

Material budget/Training costs and research costs

The main change brought by Horizon 2020 is that the European Commission will not contribute to the research/training costs anymore. When recruiting a researcher under a COFUND contract, the group/department must ensure it has sufficient Material budget to fulfil the requirements of the Grant Agreement. It is not permitted to use the funds of another EU project to fund these costs.

Overheads

There is no contribution to overheads under a Horizon 2020 COFUND project.

Unit costs

The salary of the researchers shall be a minimum of:
 

   Work Programme 2014-2015

  • 2,597 € / month for Early-Stage Researchers
  • 3,675 € / month for Experiences Researchers

Work Programme 2018-2020

  • 2,709 € / month for Early-Stage Researchers
  • 3,836 € / month for Experiences Researchers

These amounts represent the total employer’s cost, i.e. including social security contributions, taxes and other costs included in the remuneration.
Whatever the amount of the salary, the EU
 contribution is:

 

   Work Programme 2014-2015

  • 1,855 € / month for Early-Stage Researchers
  • 2,625 € / months for Experiences Researchers

Work Programme 2018-2020

  • 1,935 € / month for Early-Stage Researchers
  • 2,740 € / months for Experiences Researchers

When the researchers are recruited under a fixed-amount contract (i.e. not under a full-employment contract), the unit costs above are reduced by half.

 

Guidelines & Procedures

Use of the Management budget on a H2020 Marie Curie project(link is external)

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Updated on: 11/01/2021