Eligibility check

(i) The UKF Secretariat with assistance of the SC verifies that proposals meet the eligibility criteria referred to in the call. These criteria are rigorously applied and any proposal found to be ineligible is excluded from evaluation. The eligibility check is carried out after the beginning of the evaluation process.

(ii) The decision to exclude a proposal for failing one or more eligibility criteria is taken by the UKF Steering Committee. This decision may be taken at any appropriate moment before, during or after the evaluation sessions, when ineligibility has been proven. This decision is final and cannot be subject to further complaints.

Individual evaluation by independent experts

(i) All eligible proposals are evaluated by independent experts to examine their conformity with the evaluation criteria relevant for the call. Three members of evaluation board are nominated by UKF Secretariat and approved by Steering Committee.

(ii) All independent experts are briefed before the evaluation by the UKF Secretariat in order to inform them on the general evaluation guidelines and the objectives of the program under consideration.

(iii) Each proposal is evaluated against the applicable criteria independently by three experts who fill in individual evaluation forms developed for the particular call giving marks and providing comments. The individual evaluation is performed remotely, i.e. evaluators examine proposals which are forwarded to them at their own place.

(iv) Evaluators examine the individual issues comprising each evaluation criteria and mark the issues on a six-point scale from 0 to 5. In this scheme, the scores indicate the following: 0 - the proposal fails to address the issue under examination or can not be judged against the criterion due to missing or incomplete information; 1 – poor; 2 – fair; 3 – good; 4 - very good; 5 – excellent.

(v) Experts are required to provide comments to accompany each of their marks in a form suitable for providing feedback to the proposers. These comments serve as an input to consensus discussion.

(vi) The submission of the individual evaluation form (by post or electronically) signed by an independent expert closes his/her individual assessment. In general, appropriate electronic codes may substitute for the signature of the expert. His/her evaluation form may not subsequently be changed.

Discussions of evaluators

(i) After remote individual evaluations, the UKF Secretariat organises an evaluation discussion, i.e. consensus discussion. The consensus discussion is a meeting where all evaluators examine together their individual evaluations in the presence of Steering Committee members (at least one) and the representative of UKF Secretariat acting as moderator. The UKF representatives are not allowed to influence on the experts’ opinions. In some case arriving at a consensus may be carried out remotely (e.g. teleconferencing).

(ii) The experts attempt to agree on a consensus mark for each of the criteria and on an overall consensus report, which they then sign. The evaluators have to explain their opinions to the UKF representatives who may ask questions regarding their consensus evaluation report.

(iii) The outcome of the discussion is an evaluation report on each proposal agreed on by all evaluators. Besides, the evaluators create a final ranking of all evaluated proposals recommended for financing.