Question 7

Having in regard the Guidelines for grant applicants – HARD projects and according to Priority 4.1 – Support to the development of health services and access to health,

• by equipping two or more hospitals with specialty equipment worth at least 1 million euro, without the building component, the proposed project can be understood as a hard project in order to be eligible?
• is the infrastructure component referring only to the building component, (Feasibility study for technical project, construction authorization, construction works) or can it also be understood in the sense of infrastructure medical acquisition of specialized equipment?
• considering that in the types of activities related to the infrastructure component it is mentioned as eligible- “Developing labs and mobile labs for the prevention/detection/monitoring of diseases, injuries, incidents and border epidemics, the acquisition of a Mobile laboratory in the form of an automobile equipped with all the functions of analysis, diagnosis, can be framed in the infrastructure component defined according to the guide mentioned above?

Given the all mentioned above, can a project involving equipment be considered a HARD project or will it be framed to SOFT projects, with a maximum budget of 200,000 euro/per project?

Answer:

• In line with Programme rules and those of the Applicants Guidelines for HARD projects, “Infrastructure means permanent works and/or equipment which contribute to at least one programme (common) output that is specifically addressed by the project. Infrastructure must be entirely described in the Feasibility Studies”.
• A project that only includes the acquisition of equipment and endowments (specialised equipment) cannot be considered infrastructure. Please also refer to the definition of specialized equipment provided by the Guidelines for grant applicants, at page 54: «Devices, apparatus, components, machinery etc. having a specific function other than the equipment falling under the definition of the “infrastructure component”, but appropriate to the thematic field (priority) addressed by the project. »

The projects submitted under the call for ”hard” projects can also contain acquisition of specialized equipment which is not part of the infrastructure. This will be included in budget at the line 4.2.2 Specialized equipment and endowments, but will not count for calculating the minimum value of infrastructure (1 million).

– The infrastructure component must be described in the technical documentation – the content is provided in Annex F- Feasibility Study. The applicant can provide an integrated Feasibility Study for the infrastructure component (as a whole) at the project level, but the Programme accepts feasibility studies for the individual investments of the Partners in the project;

– The assessment of the infrastructure component and, implicitly, the eligibility verification of the project are going to be performed in the stage of technical and financial evaluation and as well, in the phase of evaluation of additional documents.

In line with the above, in the evaluation grid (Annex J.3) for step 2 – Technical and financial evaluation, there is a section dedicated to the infrastructure component (3.3 The infrastructure component), which, at point 3.3 (e) specifies that “the assessment will be made with reference to the budget sheet indicative infrastructure budget breakdown “, and in the evaluation grid for step 3 (Annex J.4) at section 2 Content assessment states at one of the criteria “the estimated costs of the infrastructure given by the Feasibility Study matches the overall cost in the budget sheet Indicative infrastructure budget breakdown of the Application Form”;

As regards the acquisition of individual equipment which is not part of an infrastructure, it can be done without restrictions under the soft projects. Please note that a project is not automatically transferred by the evaluation committee from a call to another (e.g. from ”hard” to ”soft”). In order to be considered for evaluation, the application must be submitted under each call, according to the Guidelines for applicants.