As of January 2021, all NGOs that submit Single Forms are expected to upload also the standard estimated budget of the action, namely Annex II, that will become an integral part of the grant agreement.

This budget is based on a standard template that is adopted by all the DGs of the Commission. This can be found in the reference documents of the helpdesk website.

This budget model focuses on the main categories of eligible costs as referred to in article 6.2 of the Model grant agreement, you can see these highlighted below. For the specific eligibility conditions applicable for each budget category have a look at the dedicated page.  

Furthermore, this template shows the distribution of costs within a Consortium of DG ECHO certified partners, split by Coordinator and Co-beneficiary(ies).

In case of a Consortium composed also by one or more Implementing Partner(s), the total amount of support provided to all of them must be grouped in this budget template under category D.1 “Financial support to third parties”. Do not forget that under D.1. you also have to include the total net amount of cash received by beneficiaries of the action in the framework of cash transfer activities (without ancillary costs).

When field office costs are declared as unit costs in accordance with the partner’s usual cost accounting practices, they have to be included in one dedicated category: “D2. Field office costs”.

Together with Annex 2, all partners have to submit an operational budget focusing on the nature of planned expenditures. The operational budget is essential to DG ECHO in order to assess properly the cost efficiency of the interventions. It can be submitted using the suggested template available in the dedicated spreadsheet in the Annex II Excel file. Alternatively, the organisation can use its own template, provided that it respects the following minimum requirements:

• There is a clear allocation of the direct costs between support and programme costs.  Programme costs are those direct costs that incur directly for the benefit of final beneficiaries. The support costs are also direct costs but are incurred in support to the programme costs.  

Within programme costs, further distinction (as presented in the model) between staff costs and costs of goods & services delivered to the final beneficiaries would be necessary, including a separate line for net amount of cash or goods to be distributed.

Within support costs, the minimum level of details should allow for the identification of the same or equivalent categories as presented in the model, namely: staff costs, running costs, equipment costs, specialised services, EU visibility and communication. For more examples of the distinction between support and programme costs please have a look at the document “Example of cost classification” available in the reference materials section. 

Please note that these two red columns in the DG ECHO template provide a useful indication regarding the cost category in Annex II under which each budget line should be grouped.