You can imagine the frustration stemming from the experience you had spent a lot of time and cost with a FP6 project proposal that received very good marks but in the end could not be funded because of a high competition and limited resources. FP6 proposals usually represent about 80 pages and 2-4 months of hard work (STREP example). Two or more rejected proposals in a row may discourage teams from submitting another one and even kill cash flow of small enterprises.
That is why some governments introduced schemes financially motivating the proposers and reimbursing at least a part of the cost spent on project proposals ranked just under the line dividing the list between those funded and those left behind. The Czech Republic has recently joined them.
In August, the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade started to cover 50–75% of the eligible cost of elaborating well ranked 6th Framework Programme project proposals. Up to 250,000 CZK (about 8,600 EUR) can be reimbursed to an organisation having submitted a quality project proposal as a coordinator and up to 100,000 CZK to an organisation being a consortium member. The quality is being judged on the basis of the Evaluation Summary Report and its points obtained from independent evaluators selected by the European Commission.
The minimum has been set at 15 out of 25 points for Networks of Excellence & Specific Support Actions and at 18 out of 30 points for other project types (IP, STREP, CA). The grants apply to eligible cost spent on feasibility studies, salaries, consulting services and overheads directly related to elaborating the proposal. The regional CzechInvest offices accept applications related to the project proposals submitted within FP6 calls with their deadlines from January 1, 2005.
