Recommendation for financing by Steering Committee

(i) Steering Committee reviews written reports and rankings provided by independent experts in order to take the final decision about recommendation of proposals for financing, about conditional recommendations requiring prior negotiations and about rejections of proposals.

(ii) Steering Committee’s decisions rely on evaluators’ opinions about each proposal. Steering Committee decides independently which relative importance it would assign to which criteria assessed by evaluators. In accordance with the general mark (obtained by incorporating all criteria) recommends projects that should receive financial support. In some cases Steering Committee may decide to request a new evaluation by other independent experts.

(iii) The result of the Steering Committee’s decision is a shortlist of proposals which are recommended for financing, a list of proposals requiring additional negotiations and a list of proposals not recommended for financing. SC also provides a written explanation about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the each proposed project.

Negotiations with proposers

(i) The UKF Secretariat with assistance and under guidance of Steering Committee performs negotiations with proposers whose proposals are conditionally recommended. The purpose of these negotiations is to solve all ambiguities that came out during evaluation and to obtain all possibly required revisions of proposals. The outcome of negotiations is information that helps Steering Committee to decide on recommendation for financing of ambiguous proposals.

(ii) Negotiation may cover any scientific, legal or financial aspects of the proposal, based on the comments of the independent experts and opinions of the Steering Committee. The scientific aspects would cover, in particular, revisions to the project plan and adjustments to it. The legal aspects would cover, in particular, review of any special contractual clauses or conditions required for the project. The financial aspects would cover negotiation of the amount of the UKF contribution and revisions of financial plan.

(ii) After finishing negotiations and revisions of the involved proposals, the Steering Committee issues final lists of recommended and not recommended proposal, accompanied with relevant evaluation reports and negotiation outcomes. The list of recommended proposals is forwarded to the Approval Committee.

Approvals for financing by Approval Committee

(i) The Approval Committee reviews the list of proposals recommended for financing by the Steering Committee. AC approves or rejects every recommended proposal. The decision of AC is final and cannot be subject to further objections. In the case of rejection of the recommended proposal, the AC provides written explanation to be forwarded to proposer together with the evaluation report. 

(ii) After AC finishes its approvals, the UKF Secretariat forwards all decision notices with explanations and evaluation reports to proposers. At that time the proposers with approved proposals are invited to sign the contract.