Documents

Horizon Europe Programme

Programme for research and innovation

Horizon Europe is the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation. It tackles climate change, helps to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and boots the EU’s competitiveness and growth.

The programme is the successor of the Horizon 2020 programme. The programme duration is from 2021 to and including 2027. A total of 95.5 billion euros is available.

Role of the Auditor

Important documents for the auditor are:

• Model Grant Agreement (MGA), a model agreement for Horizon Europe projects.
  Model for the certificate on the financial statements (CFS).
• A certificate on the financial statements (CFS) must be provided for entities that participate as beneficiary or affiliated entities (‘participants’) in EU grants — provided that it is required under the Grant Agreement and that certain thresholds of declared expenditure are met. The scope for this engagement is to perform specific agreed-upon procedures. The International Standard on Related Services (‘ISRS’) 4400 Engagements to perform Agreed-upon Procedures Engagements is applicable. Although the model for the certificate on financial statements is set up according to this standard, the current version (V.1.1 – 15.03.2023) contains many assurance elements.

Current status of COPRO

The NBA Subsidy Audit Community (SAC) has carried out an inventory of the discrepancies between the proposed Horizon Europe format template (V.1.1 – 15.03.2023) and the ISRS 4400. To this end, a memorandum has been drawn up in which a more detailed explanation of these technical preservation is included. In addition, a cover letter was drawn up and sent to the EC and the Common Audit Service (CAS) by the NBA. It is also stated in this letter that accountants cannot accept and carry out such assignments in their current form because of these technical objections (see download).

Based on this memorandum, the EC and CAS have drawn up new model reports (V.2 – 15.04.2024). The current template still contains some elements of an audit or assessment engagement. The template can be used if use is made of the possibilities in the CFS for the restriction on use and distribution,  the performed examination  and the inclusion of "further remarks".

An example model report is attached with suggested adjustments in red.