Best Practice. It is recommended to describe in Annex 1 the relation between the beneficiary and the foundation/spin-off, and its impact on the participation of the beneciary in the Grant Agreement. If the entity carries out, directly or via a subcontract, action tasks allocated to the beneficiary, it must also be included in the Grant Agreement as an affiliated entity. Change to a specific purchase of service and new specific purchase of service — Specific purchases of services which were identified in Annex 1 (and for which assurance was granted) may be changed and new specific purchase of service that are deemed necessary may be introduced, both via an amendment. The amendment request will not be agreed, if it would result in changes that — if known before awarding the grant — would have had an impact on the award decision (see Article 39). Best practice: Beneficiaries should contact the granting authority (via Funding & Tenders Portal Message), if they intend to amend the grant to change a specific purchase of service assessed during proposal evaluation or to introduce a new specific purchase of service during the action implementation. Providers of research infrastructures services for trans-national and virtual access of users (HE) — Providers of high quality, in some cases unique, state-of-the-art research infrastructures services can be preselected when preparing the proposal (or later, to be added with amendments) on the basis of the quality of the services they provide and of the level of demand for these services by trans-national users applying for access in the framework of the HE project. The proposal and Annex 1 should identify these providers and describe both the access services provided and the logistical, technological and scientific support users need in order to make use of the installation (including ad-hoc training and preparatory and closing activities necessary to use the installation). The reimbursement of their costs by the beneficiaries will be considered as a specific purchase of services. If for any legal reasons, e.g. due to its applicable national legislation, an entity providing research infrastructures services cannot issue an invoice to a beneficiary but can be paid or reimbursed via any other forms of transaction, this system would be assimilated to an invoice for the assessment of the eligibility of these specific purchase of services costs. Their contribution to the inclusive and comprehensive portfolio of services requested in the topics, the quality of their services, the fact that they fulfil a demand from users of the grant and that they do not make profit, as their access costs are calculated according to a well-defined methodology and usually do not include capital investment, can give assurance to the granting authority that, in general, the best value for money and no conflict of interest criteria are met. To this extent, sufficient details must be provided in the proposal (or in the amendment request), such as name of the service providers, purchase costs and object; explanation why these service providers are needed and the purchase costs of the services appropriate. Example: Beneficiaries can explain why these providers of scientific services are necessary for the action, confirm that they will not include any profit margin when being reimbursed by the beneficiaries; that they will bear part of the access costs to the research infrastructure (because some of their costs will not be reimbursed like depreciation costs of their equipments). Annex 1 will explicitly identify these specific purchases of services. For these specific purchases of services, beneficiaries have assurance that compliance with best value for money and no conflict of interest principles will not be challenged in audits — unless it turns out that the beneficiary did not follow the procedure above (i.e. appropriate and sufficient description of these specific purchases of services), or concealed information for the purpose of the approval.
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