- a work
means the outcome of building or civil engineering works taken as a whole that is sufficient in itself to fulfil an economic or technical function;
- applicant
means a natural person or an entity with or without legal personality who has submitted an application in a grant award procedure, in a non-financial donation award procedure or in a contest for prizes;
- application document
means a tender, a request to participate, an application further to a call for expression of interest, a grant application, an application for a non-financial donation or an application in a contest for prizes;
- award procedure
means a procurement procedure, a grant award procedure, a contest for prizes, an award procedure for a non-financial donation or a procedure for the selection of experts or persons or entities implementing the budget pursuant to Article 62(1), first subparagraph, point (c);
- basic act
means a legal act, other than a recommendation or an opinion, which provides a legal basis for an action and for the implementation of the corresponding expenditure entered in the budget or of the budgetary guarantee or financial assistance backed by the budget, and which may take any of the following forms:
- beneficiary
means a natural person or an entity with or without legal personality with whom a grant agreement has been signed;
- blending facility or platform
means a cooperation framework established between the Commission and development or other public finance institutions with a view to combining non-repayable forms of support and/or financial instruments and/or budgetary guarantees from the budget and repayable forms of support from development or other public finance institutions, as well as from private-sector finance institutions and private-sector investors;
- budget implementation
means the carrying out of activities relating to the management, monitoring, control and auditing of budget appropriations in accordance with the methods provided for in Article 62;
- budgetary commitment
means the operation by which the authorising officer responsible reserves the budget appropriations necessary to cover subsequent payments to honour legal commitments;
- budgetary guarantee
means an instrument through which the Union supports a programme of actions by taking on the budget an irrevocable and unconditional financial obligation that can be called upon should a specified event materialise during the implementation of the programme, and that remains valid for the duration of the maturity of the commitments made under the supported programme;
- building contract
means a contract covering the purchase, exchange, long lease, usufruct, leasing, rental or hire purchase, with or without option to buy, of land, buildings or other immovable property.
- candidate
means an economic operator that has sought an invitation or has been invited to take part in a restricted procedure, a competitive procedure with negotiation, a competitive dialogue, an innovation partnership, a design contest or a negotiated procedure;
- central purchasing body
means a contracting authority providing centralised purchasing activities and, where applicable, ancillary purchasing activities;
- check
means the verification of a specific aspect of a revenue or expenditure operation;
- concession contract
means a contract for pecuniary interest concluded in writing between one or more economic operators and one or more contracting authorities within the meaning of Articles 177 and 181, in order to entrust the execution of works or the provision and management of services to an economic operator (the ‘concession’), and where:
- constitution phase
means the period during which the global provisioning is paid into the common provisioning fund;
- contingent liability
means a potential financial obligation that could be incurred depending on the outcome of a future event;
- contract
means a public contract or a concession contract or, for Title VIII, a subcontract or purchase contract concluded by a beneficiary;
- contractor
means an economic operator with whom a public contract has been signed;
- contribution agreement
means an agreement concluded with persons or entities implementing Union funds pursuant to Article 62(1), first subparagraph, points (c)(ii) to (viii);
- control
means any measure taken to provide reasonable assurance regarding the effectiveness, efficiency and economy of operations, the reliability of reporting, the safeguarding of assets and information, the prevention and detection and correction of fraud and irregularities and their follow-up, and the adequate management of the risks relating to the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions, taking into account the multiannual character of programmes as well as the nature of the payments concerned.
- Corporate sponsorship
means an agreement by which a legal person supports in-kind an event or an activity for promotional or corporate social responsibility purposes.
- counterpart
means the party that is granted a budgetary guarantee;
- crisis
means:
- decommitment
means an operation whereby the authorising officer responsible cancels wholly or partly the reservation of appropriations previously made by means of a budgetary commitment;
- dynamic purchasing system
means a completely electronic process for making commonly used purchases of items generally available on the market;
- economic operator
means any natural or legal person, including a public entity, or a group of such persons, who offers to supply products, execute works or provide services or supply immovable property;
- equity investment
means the provision of capital to a company, invested directly or indirectly in return for total or partial ownership of that company and where the equity investor may assume some management control of the company and may share the company’s profits;
- European office
means an administrative structure set up by the Commission, or by the Commission with one or more other Union institutions, to perform specific cross-cutting tasks;
- final administrative decision
means a decision of an administrative authority having final and binding effect in accordance with the applicable law;
- financial asset
means any asset in the form of cash, an equity instrument of a publicly or privately held entity or a contractual right to receive cash or another financial asset from such entity;
- financial instrument
means a Union measure of financial support provided from the budget to address one or more specific policy objectives of the Union which may take the form of equity or quasi-equity investments, loans or guarantees, or other risk-sharing instruments, and which may, where appropriate, be combined with other forms of financial support or with funds under shared management or funds of the European Development Fund (EDF);
- financial liability
means a contractual obligation to deliver cash or another financial asset to another entity;
- foreign subsidy
means a financial contribution within the meaning of Article 3(2) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2560 provided by a third country that falls within the description provided in Article 3(1) of that Regulation;
- framework contract
means a public contract concluded between one or more economic operators and one or more contracting authorities, the purpose of which is to establish the terms governing specific contracts under it to be awarded during a given period, in particular with regard to price and, where appropriate, the quantity envisaged;
- global provisioning
means the total amount of resources deemed necessary over the entire lifetime of a budgetary guarantee or financial assistance to a third country as a result of applying the provisioning rate referred to in Article 214(1) to the amount of the budgetary guarantee or financial assistance to a third country authorised by the basic act referred to in Article 213(1), points (b) and (c);
- grant
means a financial contribution by way of donation.
- guarantee
means a written commitment to assume responsibility for all or part of a third party’s debt or obligation or for the successful performance by that third party of its obligations if an event occurs which triggers such guarantee, such as a loan default;
- guarantee on demand
means a guarantee that must be honoured by the guarantor upon the counterpart’s demand, notwithstanding any deficiencies in the enforceability of the underlying obligation;
- in-kind contribution
means non-financial resources made available free of charge by third parties to a beneficiary;
- legal commitment
means an act whereby the authorising officer responsible enters into or establishes an obligation which results in a subsequent payment and the recognition of expenditure covered by a budgetary commitment, or in an obligation to provide a non-financial donation, and which includes specific agreements and contracts concluded under financial framework partnership agreements and framework contracts;
- leverage effect
means the amount of reimbursable financing provided to eligible final recipients divided by the amount of the Union contribution;
- liquidity risk
means the risk that a financial asset held in the common provisioning fund might not be sold during a certain period of time without incurring a significant loss;
- loan
means an agreement which obliges the lender to make available to the borrower an agreed amount of money for an agreed period and under which the borrower is obliged to repay that amount within the agreed period;
- low value grant
means a grant lower than or equal to EUR 60000;
- Member State organisation
means an entity established in a Member State as a public law body, or as a body governed by private law entrusted with a public service mission and provided with adequate financial guarantees from the Member State;
- method of implementation
means any of the methods of budget implementation referred to in Article 62, that is direct management, indirect management and shared management;
- multi-donor action
means any action where Union funds are pooled with at least one other donor;
- multiple sourcing procurement
means procurement where it is intended to award multiple contracts concluded in writing in parallel between multiple economic operators and one or more contracting authorities within the meaning of Article 177(1), in order to entrust the execution of identical or quasi-identical services, supplies or works to be performed in parallel by different contractors;
- multiplier effect
means the investment by eligible final recipients divided by the amount of the Union contribution;
- non-governmental organisation
means a voluntary, independent from government, non-profit organisation, which is not a political party or a trade union;
- output
means the deliverables generated by the action determined in accordance with sector-specific rules;
- participant
means a candidate or tenderer in a procurement procedure, an applicant in a grant award procedure or in a non-financial donation award procedure, an expert in a procedure for selection of experts, an applicant in a contest for prizes or a person or entity participating in a procedure for implementing Union funds pursuant to Article 62(1), first subparagraph, point (c);
- presumed successful tenderer
means any tenderer in a procurement procedure that is ranked first, subject to further checks and provision of supporting documents on exclusion and/or selection criteria in order to be proposed by the evaluation committee as a successful tenderer.
- prize
means a contribution given as a reward following a contest.
- procurement
means the acquisition by means of a contract of works, supplies or services and the acquisition or rental of land, buildings or other immovable property, by one or more contracting authorities from economic operators chosen by those contracting authorities;
- procurement document
means any document produced or referred to by the contracting authority to describe or determine elements of the procurement procedure, including:
- professional conflicting interests
means a situation in which the previous or ongoing professional activities of an economic operator affect or risk affecting its capacity to perform a contract in an independent, impartial and objective manner;
- public contract
means a contract for pecuniary interest concluded in writing between one or more economic operators and one or more contracting authorities within the meaning of Articles 177 and 181, in order to obtain, against payment of a price paid in whole or in part from the budget, the supply of movable or immovable assets, the execution of works or the provision of services, comprising:
- quasi-equity investment
means a type of financing that ranks between equity and debt, having a higher risk than senior debt and a lower risk than common equity and which can be structured as debt, typically unsecured and subordinated and in some cases convertible into equity, or into preferred equity;
- recipient
means a beneficiary, a contractor, a remunerated external expert or a person or entity receiving prizes, non-financial donations or support from the budget under a financial instrument or a budgetary guarantee, or implementing Union funds pursuant to Article 62(1), first subparagraph, point (c);
- repurchase agreement
means the sale of securities for cash with an agreement to repurchase them on a specified future date, or on demand;
- research and technological development appropriation
means an appropriation entered either in one of the titles of the budget relating to the policy areas linked to ‘Indirect research’ or ‘Direct research’ or in a chapter relating to research activities in another title;
- result
means the effects of the implementation of an action determined in accordance with sector-specific rules;
- risk-sharing instrument
means a financial instrument which allows for the sharing of a defined risk between two or more entities, where appropriate in exchange for an agreed remuneration;
- service contract
means a contract covering all intellectual and non-intellectual services other than those covered by supply contracts, works contracts and building contracts;
- sound financial management
means implementation of the budget in accordance with the principles of economy, efficiency and effectiveness;
- staff
means persons covered by the Staff Regulations.
- Staff Regulations
means the Staff Regulations of Officials of the European Union and the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants of the European Union laid down in Regulation (EEC, Euratom, ECSC) No 259/68;
- subcontractor
means an economic operator that is proposed by a candidate or tenderer or contractor to perform part of a contract or by a beneficiary to perform part of the tasks co-financed by a grant;
- subscription
means sums paid to bodies of which the Union is member, in accordance with the budgetary decisions and the conditions of payment established by the body concerned;
- supply contract
means a contract covering the purchase, leasing, rental or hire purchase, with or without option to buy, of products, and which may include, as an incidental matter, siting and installation operations;
- technical assistance
means, without prejudice to sector-specific rules, support and capacity-building activities necessary for the implementation of a programme or an action, in particular preparatory, management, monitoring, evaluation, audit and control activities;
- tenderer
means an economic operator that has submitted a tender;
- Union
means the European Union, the European Atomic Energy Community, or both, as the context may require;
- Union institution
means the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council, the Commission, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Court of Auditors, the European Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions, the European Ombudsman, the European Data Protection Supervisor or the European External Action Service (the ‘EEAS’);
- vendor
means an economic operator registered in a list of vendors to be invited to submit requests to participate in or submit tenders;
- very low value grant
means a grant lower than or equal to EUR 15000;
- volunteer
means a person working on a non-compulsory basis for an organisation without being paid;
- works contract
means a contract covering either: