Following suggestions from the Ombudsman, the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) issued new guidelines on how staff should handle situations where a change during a Horizon 2020 or Horizon Europe project is likely to lead to the termination of the grant agreement. Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe are EU funding programmes for research and innovation.

The new guidelines specify that when EISMEA learns of a situation that will likely lead to the termination of a grant, it must inform the beneficiary about it within 15 working days. It must also inform the beneficiary about the impact this will have on its ongoing project work and the eligibility of costs covered by the grant.

EISMEA’s new guidelines follow an Ombudsman inquiry into how it terminated a grant agreement because the funding recipient had lost its status as a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) after being taken over by another company. The Ombudsman issued suggestions for improvement after finding that, while EISMEA’s decision to terminate the grant was reasonable, delays and communication problems in the termination process itself constituted maladministration.