Participants in a proposal fall into a number of different legal categories, according to the type of activity proposed and the nature of a participant’s role in it (see box 6 and III.5.3.).

III.2. Proposal submission

III.2.1. call for proposals

Calls for Proposals published in the Official Journal will open certain parts of a Specific Programme’s Work Programmes for proposals, indicating what types of actions (RTD projects, Accompanying measures etc.) are expected. In addition to those with a fixed closing date, the Commission will open certain Calls on a longer ‘open’ basis, with periodic evaluation of received proposals. A provisional timetable for the Calls of a Specific Programme is included in each Work Programme.

A Call may address the full programme, a key action, one or several research themes, areas, sectors, action lines, objectives, topics. In order to ensure co-ordination among the Specific Programmes, common Calls may be published. The objectives to be achieved may also be fully detailed, for example in the case of key actions or dedicated calls[xiv].

Proposals submitted under a Call shall be subject to a selection process presented in section III.4.

Certain Accompanying Measures may however be based on spontaneous applications or on a call for tender, and shall therefore be subject to a different process[xv].

III.2.2. Submission

Participants should complete the appropriate Proposal Submission Form corresponding to the type of action involved, preferably using the software tool that the Commission supplies: The Proposal Preparation Tool or ‘ProTool’, available at the following address: http://www.cordis.lu/fp5/protool.

Proposals must be completed in full as detailed in the Guide for Proposers Part 2.

In addition, experience in previous Calls shows that a number of general recommendations, provided in box 9, may be helpful. Participants have the choice to submit proposals either electronically or on paper.

Submission takes place in the following steps, which are detailed in Part 2 of this Guide.

III.3. Proposal evaluation

III.3.1. General principles

The evaluation of proposals will be based on the fundamental principles of transparency and equality of treatment. The entire selection process and the description of the criteria by which the proposals will be evaluated are presented in the Evaluation Manual (see also box 5 and Appendix 6 of Part 2 of this Guide).

In general, and in order to help the Commission, panels of independent, external experts[xvi] will be constituted covering a wide range of relevant expertise, without linguistic or geographic bias. Proposers’ confidentiality will be fully respected, both to avoid conflicts of interest and to preserve the impartiality of the independent experts.