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Technical Assistance
This section is dedicated to the preparation and management of technical assistance (TA) budget in ETC programmes.
Provisions related to technical assistance budget are specified in article 46 of Council Regulation (EC) No 1083/2006.
The limit for technical assistance covering all activities is 6% of programme’s ERDF allocation.
The TA budget must be presented for approval to the Monitoring (and/or Steering) Committee at programme start (presentation of a business plan is recommended). Regular, either annual or more frequent, reporting on the use of the TA budget is usually required by the Monitoring (and/or Steering) Committee. Since Member States co-finance the budget, the first MC should also agree on a method of securing contributions from the participating countries or regions. There are no formal requirements for how contributions from countries to the TA budget should be made.
In order to monitor costs, TA budgets should be broken down on a quarterly or monthly basis. The budget lines used to plan and monitor TA budgets are typically very similar to those for the projects. For example, those establishing monitoring systems and websites. Procedures for reporting on and monitoring TA budget expenditure should be set up as part of the programme’s control system.
TA expenditure is also an important aspect of meeting decommitment targets during the first years of the programme when project spending might be expected to be slow. Many of the most costly TA actions (establishing websites and monitoring systems, preparing programme publicity actions, running large scale events to attract project developers etc.) should be carried out during the first year of operations. This early expenditure can be crucial for meeting the first N+2 or N+3 target although the share of TA in total programme expenditure is relatively low.
Most of the previous INTERREG programmes have continued in the current programming period. These programmes were able to use the current TA budget to cover costs related to the closure of the previous programmes accordance with the consent of the European Commission.
Note of the Commission Services No.2
Word Document, 69.5 KB
Programming of Technical Assistance in the 2007-13 period
Note of the Commission Services No.5
PDF Document, 20.2 KB
Financing, by the 2007-2013 technical assistance allocation, of the technical assistance tasks of the 2000-2006 programmes incurred after the final date of eligibility
