The EEA and Norway Grants have the two overall objectives of contributing to the reduction of economic and social disparities in the European Economic Area and strengthening the bilateral relations between the EEA EFTA states Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway and the 15 beneficiary states.
Bilateral relations between countries often refer to political, economic, cultural and historic ties. Strong bilateral relations are characterised by cooperation between institutions and persons at administrative and political level as well as in the private sector, academia and civil society.
In order to strengthen bilateral relations, partnership projects are encouraged. Partnership projects are joint projects where input from both parties are necessary to achieve the objectives of the project. In the previous grant period, over 100 projects with bilateral partnerships were implemented under the NGO Funds, mostly in Poland, Slovenia and Cyprus.
In the period 2004-09, more than 1 in 5 supported projects were partnership projects between entities such as municipalities, research institutions, NGOs and universities in the beneficiary states and Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The majority of these projects were found within the fields of academic research, environmental protection and sustainable development. In addition to 285 partnership projects among the individual projects, hundreds of partnership projects were supported under the many funds and programmes managed at national level.
Facilitating partnerships: Bilateral funds
Special seed money funds will be set up in the beneficiary states to cover networking, finding partners, exchange of experiences and establishing partnerships. All programmes shall set aside a minimum of 1.5% of the programme in a bilateral fund.
Lessons learned from the 2004-09 funding period have been taken into account in the new regulatory framework by introducing various measures to encourage bilateral cooperation at programme and project level.
The lack of seed money for developing partnership was previously identified as an impediment. Within all beneficiary states, bilateral funds will now be set aside both at the national level and within all programmes for networking and exchange and/or for the establishment and development of partnerships and the preparation of applications for donor partnership projects.
* In each beneficiary state, at least 0.5% of the country's total allocation will be set aside for a bilateral fund to facilitate outreach and networking between programme operators and donor programme partners, or potential project partners from the donor states. These bilateral funds will be available also before the programmes have been fully developed and approved by the foreign ministries of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
* Within each programme, at least 1.5% of the available funding will be earmarked for the search for project partners from the donor states, the development of bilateral partnerships and the preparation of applications for donor partnership projects. The funding will also be used to support additional networking and exchange with entities in the donor states for approved projects.
* The programme operators may also spend some funds on activities that may strengthen their cooperation with similar entities in the donor states.
The proposal for the partnership project should be developed in cooperation between the beneficiary project promoter and the donor state partner. A project partner can incur costs to be funded by the project in the same manner as the project promoter. This needs to be included in the individual budget of the project application. Examples of costs that may be covered are travel expenses and standard hourly rates to cover actual costs.
Guide to becoming a partner Read more...
