6 th April 2016 Subject: EuropeAid DEAR Call 2016 (Reference EuropeAid/151103/C/ACT/MULTI) published 18th March 2016 Dear Commissioner Mimica, dear Director General Mr. Rudischhauser, dear Ms. Bento Pais, dear Mr. Lenormand While the new EuropeAid Development Education and Awareness Raising (DEAR) Call 2016 (https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/europeaid/prospect/internal/noauth/externalDocumentDownload.htm?id=122451& lang=en ) is highly appreciated as a timely call for proposals reflecting very well the development and DEAR priorities of the European union as well as new international frameworks like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the outcomes of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21), it - however - holds a very problematic administrative provision on page 18 of the guidelines, stating: „Number of applications and grants per applicants: A legal entity may only apply once either as a lead applicant, co-applicant or affiliated entity under this call for propsals (all lots). All applications that do not respect the above condition will be rejected.“ This provision is problematic and is threatening the community of experienced DEAR NGOs that network and share best practices on European level. because: This provision is not coherent with the documents that represent the legal basis of the present call. It is neither based in the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI 2014-2020, http://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32014R0233&from=EN ), being the legal basis of the call, nor in the Multiannual Indicative Programme for the thematic programme Civil Society Organisations and Local Authorities for the period 2014-2020 (https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/aidco/images/2/2b/CSO_LA_MIP_CSO_LA_2014_2020_EN.pdf), nor in the Commission implementing decision of 30 June 2015 on the Multi-Annual Action Programme for years 2015 part II, 2016 and 2017 “Civil Society Organisations and Local Authorities” to be financed from the general budget of the European Union (http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/sites/devco/files/commission- decision-cso-las-maap-30062015_en.pdf ). As the above documents being the basis for the present Call for proposals numerous partnerships of NGOs (CSOs) as well as Local Authorities have already started to work on proposals not knowing about the new provision. Despite the fact that this change of policy (a radical change from all earlier call for proposals) has huge implications but there was no earlier notice that was given to CSOs. As each organisation can only participate in one application, this new provision will diminish the number of applications to the call, and, while this may put less pressure on the DEAR proposals evaluators, it will also diminish the diversity and innovation of the applications presented, as old well-established DEAR NGO organisations will use their single chance for an application in their established core field. Opportunities for new, innovative partnerships will be highly diminished and this will have a specific impact on smaller NGOs (especially from new member states) that will have less chances to participate in partnerships with experienced DEAR NGOs and increase their capacity and work in different fields of work as they are only allowed to participate in one application. Similarly, new actors like trade unions, smaller new member state NGOs, local authorities etc. will have less possibilities to partner with experienced DEAR NGOs and increase their capacity as they can only be in one application. This provision will not favour diversity in applicants and applications: while bigger NGOs have a number of other possibilities for funding their projects and programs, smaller but experienced DEAR-NGOs having to rely only on one application would be really limited in their work, if not threatened in their existence. We therefore call on the EC to publish a Corrigendum to the guidelines for the call erasing this provision stated above. On behalf of 19 NGO platforms/networks and 53 NGOs as listed below.