PART ONECOMMON PROVISIONS
TITLE VIGRANTS
CHAPTER 3Award procedure
Article 131Applications for grants
1
Grant applications shall be submitted in writing, including, where appropriate, in a secure electronic format.
The Commission shall provide, where it deems it feasible, the possibility of making online grant applications.
2
Grant applications shall be eligible if submitted by the following:
a
legal persons; or
b
natural persons, in so far as this is required by the nature or characteristics of the action or the objective pursued by the applicant.
For the purposes of point (a) of the first subparagraph, grant applications may be eligible if submitted by entities which do not have legal personality under the applicable national law, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on behalf of the entity and offer guarantees for the protection of the Union's financial interests equivalent to those offered by legal persons.
3
The application shall state the legal status of the applicant and demonstrate his or her financial and operational capacity to carry out the proposed action or work programme.
For that purpose the applicant shall submit a declaration on his or her honour and, unless the grant is a low value grant, any supporting documents requested, on the basis of a risk assessment, by the authorising officer responsible. The prerequisite documents shall be indicated in the call for proposals.
The verification of financial capacity shall not apply to natural persons in receipt of scholarships, to natural persons most in need and in receipt of direct support, to public bodies or international organisations. The authorising officer responsible may, depending on a risk assessment, waive the obligation to verify the operational capacity of public bodies or international organisations.
4
Article 106(1) and Articles 107, 108 and 109 shall also apply to grant applicants. Applicants shall certify that they are not in one of the situations referred to in those Articles. However, the authorising officer responsible shall not require such certification in the following cases:
a
low value grants;
b
when such certification has recently been provided in another award procedure.
5
Administrative and financial penalties which are effective, proportionate and dissuasive may be imposed on applicants by the authorising officer responsible, in accordance with Article 109.
Those penalties may also be imposed on beneficiaries who at the moment of the submission of the application or during the implementation of the grant, have made false declarations in supplying the information required by the authorising officer responsible or fail to supply that information.
6
The Commission shall be empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 210 concerning detailed rules on the arrangements for grant applications, evidence of not falling within an exclusion situation, applicants without legal personality, legal persons forming one applicant, financial and administrative penalties, eligibility criteria and low value grants.