Clarification on UK Associated Partners in the MSCA DN 2022 Call

The UKRI Guarantee Team have confirmed that for UK organisations involved in a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Networks (MSCA DN) funded under the 2022 call, which are currently in the Grant Agreement Preparation process and transferring from a beneficiary to an Associated Partner (AP), the same approach will be taken as for those funded under the MSCA DN 2021 call.

Due to the unique nature of the MSAC DN eligibility criteria, the change in the status of the UK from a beneficiary to an AP could result in a large number of projects no longer meeting the consortium eligibility conditions and being deemed ineligible. To have a fair and consistent approach for the MSCA DN 2021 call, the European Research Executive Agency (REA) allowed all funded projects to retain the full amount of EC funding and if necessary, increase the number of beneficiaries, while retaining the UK partner as an AP. UKRO understands that this approach has been taken by REA for the MSCA DN 2022 call and UKRI have confirmed that this is possible under the terms of the Horizon Europe Guarantee as was the case previously.

Please note that the approach applied to the MSCA DNs is different to a standard Horizon Europe process of reducing the EC funding by the amount provided by the UK HE Guarantee.

UK entity as an Associated Partner

APs have an integral role in enriching the training experience of a researcher through the hosting of secondments and or by providing other training and research opportunities. APs who have their own source of funding (or are funded by national funders), can recruit Doctoral Candidates (DC) to the DN. These DCs do not count towards the overall MSCA person-month limit per DN. The DCs recruited by the APs are able to fully participate in the DN, including going on secondments and attending network-wide training activities. The DCs recruited by the APs are additional to the MSCA-funded DCs and UKRO understands will not be considered MSCA fellows.

The UK-based beneficiaries that become APs will receive funding from the UK Horizon Europe Guarantee to recruit DCs as originally outlined in the submitted proposal. The PhD project to be undertaken in the UK must be the same project that was originally foreseen in the proposal. A UK-based organisation cannot propose a new project to be funded by the Horizon Europe Guarantee. In projects retaining the original EC funding, alongside the Horizon Europe Guarantee funding, the new PhD projects for the additional fellows must be hosted by the MSCA DN beneficiaries.

Under the terms of the Horizon Europe Guarantee, UK-based organisations have the flexibility to use the MSCA institutional unit costs as necessary to ensure the successful implementation of the DN project, including transferring funds to the coordinator to contribute to network-wide activities. Similarly, REA has also confirmed that the DN beneficiaries can use their institutional unit costs to reimburse the costs of the AP hosting secondments and/or providing training activities.