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Call for proposals for action grants to support consumer education, awareness raising and local advice to consumers
Funding Program
Single Market Programme
Call number
SMP-CONS-2024-EDU
deadlines
Opening
26.03.2024
Deadline
06.06.2024 17:00
Funding rate
85%
Call budget
€ 1,200,000.00
Estimated EU contribution per project
€ 150,000.00
Link to the call
Link to the submission
Call content
short description
The overall objective of this call for proposals is to protect, empower and assist consumers, in particular those who are the most vulnerable, by enhancing their skills, and knowledge, by providing local advice, by raising awareness of their rights, obligations, and choices in the market.
Call objectives
The proposals under this call shall address one or more of the following objectives reflecting the key themes and priorities in providing consumer education, awareness and local advice:
- Consumer rights and responsibilities: understanding rules and regulations with which both businesses and consumers must comply as actors; understanding consumer right to safety, choice, information, and redress.
- Financial literacy: budgeting, managing personal finances effectively, understanding mortgage, credits terms, interest rates and financial products.
- Digital literacy and online safety: safe online shopping, recognizing scams and phishing attempts, protecting personal data, developing critical thinking when consuming media content.
- Environmental sustainability: reducing carbon footprint through environmentally responsible consumer choices, supporting eco-labels and sustainable practices.
At least one of the following specific objectives need to be achieved:
- Enhance consumers’ information and awareness of their rights, responsibilities, and choices in the marketplace.
- Strengthen consumers’ skills and knowledge when shopping in the store and online.
- Improve access to local advice services.
- Promote sustainable consumption as part of the circular economy.
- Improve digital literacy of consumers.
- Strengthen cooperation between practitioners in the field of consumer education and local advice to enhance their knowledge and capacity to design and implement effective educational initiatives and exchange of best practices.
The applicant is expected to clearly demonstrate in the application that the objectives of the proposal are relevant, clearly defined and contribute to one or several priorities and objectives of the call.
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Expected effects and impacts
- Increased awareness of consumer rights, obligations, and choices in the market.
- Increased promotion of sustainable consumption behaviours.
- More empowered consumers equipped with higher skills being able to make informed purchasing decisions.
- Consumers are better equipped to recognise unfair commercial practices.
- Increased accessibility and improved quality of local advice services to consumers that address specific needs of vulnerable consumers.
- More educational materials developed and disseminated among the relevant stakeholders.
- Improved capacity and expertise of professionals active in consumer education and consumer advice.
Expected results
In the proposal, the applicant must provide a clear description of how the proposed actions will contribute to improving consumer awareness, education and/or local advice to consumers.
The applicant is expected to demonstrate that the activities are based on the identified problem and needs analysis and tailored to address the needs of vulnerable groups of consumers.
The applicant must comprehensively list and describe the activities, by providing detailed explanations on how these actions will directly contribute to achieving the above-mentioned specified objectives of the call.
The applicant is expected to demonstrate a solid project management and execution plans for each proposed action ensuring that descriptions are detailed and coherent, with a clear focus on tangible outcomes for consumers.
A wide range of activities are eligible to be supported by action grants. Such activities may include for instance (non-exhaustive list):
- Educational workshops, webinars, trainings, seminars, and community events.
- Multimedia awareness raising campaigns.
- Development and dissemination of educational materials, applications, websites, and online platforms.
- Development and implementation of school-based programmes.
- Providing local assistance and advice to vulnerable groups of consumers.
- Sharing knowledge, facilitating cooperation and exchange of best practices, and learning on consumer education at national, regional, or EU-wide levels.
- Activities strengthening the capacities of local organisations providing assistance and advice to consumers.
- Promoting awareness of sustainable practices within the local community.
The applicant is expected to demonstrate in the proposal that:
- the budget provides resources needed for successful implementation, that it is clearly linked to the proposal activities, and is neither overestimated nor underestimated,
- the challenges/risks of the project are clearly identified, and mitigating actions properly addressed,
- the communication and dissemination measures of the project and its results to different target groups are clearly defined.
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Eligibility Criteria
Regions / countries for funding
Armenia (Հայաստան), Georgia (საქართველო), Iceland (Ísland), Liechtenstein
eligible entities
Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) / Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO)
Mandatory partnership
No
Project Partnership
In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
- be legal entities (public or private bodies)
- be non-profit-bodies
- be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
- EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
- non-EU countries: listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Single Market Programme (list of participating countries)
Specific cases:
Exceptional funding — Entities from other countries (not listed above) are exceptionally eligible, if the granting authority considers their participation essential for the implementation of the action.
Natural persons — Natural persons are NOT eligible (with the exception of selfemployed persons, i.e. sole traders, where the company does not have legal personality separate from that of the natural person).
International organisations — International organisations are not eligible. The rules on eligible countries do not apply to them.
Entities without legal personality — Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees for the protection of the EU financial interests equivalent to that offered by legal persons.
EU bodies — EU bodies (with the exception of the European Commission Joint Research Centre) can NOT be part of the consortium.
Associations and interest groupings — Entities composed of members may participate as ‘sole beneficiaries’ or ‘beneficiaries without legal personality’ . Please note that if the action will be implemented by the members, they should also participate (either as beneficiaries or as affiliated entities, otherwise their costs will NOT be eligible).
Countries currently negotiating association agreements — Beneficiaries from countries with ongoing negotiations (see above) may participate in the call and can sign grants if the negotiations are concluded before grant signature (with retroactive effect, if provided in the agreement).
other eligibility criteria
Proposals by a single applicant as well as by a consortium are allowed. Members of the consortium must comply with the eligibility criteria.
Financial support to third parties is not allowed.
Additional information
Topics
Relevance for EU Macro-Region
EUSAIR - EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region, EUSALP - EU Strategy for the Alpine Space, EUSBSR - EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, EUSDR - EU Strategy for the Danube Region
UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs)
project duration
18 months
Additional Information
Proposals must be submitted electronically via the Funding & Tenders Portal Electronic Submission System (accessible via the Topic page in the Search Funding & Tenders section). Paper submissions are NOT possible.
Proposals (including annexes and supporting documents) must be submitted using the forms provided inside the Submission System ( NOT the documents available on the Topic page — they are only for information).
Proposals must be complete and contain all the requested information and all required annexes and supporting documents:
- Application Form Part A — contains administrative information about the participants (future coordinator, beneficiaries and affiliated entities) and the summarised budget for the project (to be filled in directly online)
- Application Form Part B — contains the technical description of the project (to be downloaded from the Portal Submission System, completed and then assembled and re-uploaded)
- mandatory annexes and supporting documents (templates available to be downloaded from the Portal Submission System, completed, assembled and re-uploaded):
- detailed budget table
Your application must be readable, accessible and printable. Proposals are limited to maximum 50 pages (Part B). Evaluators will not consider any additional pages.
Call documents
SMP-CONS-2024-EDU Call documentSMP-CONS-2024-EDU Call document(855kB)
Contact
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