Contract Negotiations
November 19th, 2007 — fp7discussionI have just started my first FP7 contract negotiation. The Commission project officer is being very tough, and has told me I have to reduce costs overall by almost 20%. My view is that the project will then not be viable, but he doesn’t accept that. When I ask him why he wants to cut the different costs, he just says ‘you and your partners are too expensive”. But we are all charging our usual costs and there is nothing in the Evaluation Summary Form about expensive partners. Are Project Officers allowed to do this sort of thing? Can anybody give me some practical advice about what to do? But quickly because the next negotiation meeting is very soon!
November 22nd, 2007 at 10:18 am
The project officer can not force you to reduce your costs. just like that. During the negotiation he can only oblige you to follow the recommendations of the evaluators. If they recommended a budget cut, then you will have to reduce your costs, but then they would also have indicated the reasoning behind this reduction. It should be in the Evaluation Summary Report. If the evaluators did not write anything about expensive project partners, then the project officer has no right to force you to reduce the costs.
November 30th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
I agree with NCP-BIO-NL: the EC cannot force you to use lower cost rates, these are simply matters of fact to be determined by accountants. However, the negotiation mandate will give a budget figure, and it is virtually impossible to change this. Instead, you should look to reduce the effort to match the budget, by cutting out work. Otherwise eventually you will be doing the same work as originally proposed for much reduced funding