The Notice is addressed exclusively to projects already funded by the INTERREG V-A Italia-Malta Programme, in 2014-2020 programming cycle, which have concluded the activities and / or achieved the expected results. If the results achieved by a project have one of the characteristics described in art. 6 of Notice n. 3/2022, these results may be capitalized through the resources of Notice n. 3/2022.

The objective of Notice n. 3/2022 is to capitalize on the results obtained by the INTERREG V-A  Italia-Malta Programme, in the 2014-2020 programming cycle, through the financing of projects that propose the transfer and reuse of the results achieved.

Capitalization is the ability to maximize the results of a project funded by the INTERREG V-A Italia-Malta Programme, and produce additional added value over time.

The suitability and effectiveness of a results capitalization action is demonstrated through:

• The identification of the relevant outputs / results that have been achieved by a project.
• The motivation of the relevance of the outputs / results for their transfer and reuse.
• The identification of potential re-users and how to involve them.
• The impact in the medium to long term and in the cross-border area, including the WestMED community, of the proposed actions.

The identification of the outputs / results must be understood as referring to the outputs / "core" results of a project and not to those deriving from transversal activities such as management and / or communication.

Public Notice n. 3/2022 provides for an allocation of € 2,911,192.00 from the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund), corresponding to a percentage of Community public co-financing of 85%.

The remaining 15% share is represented by the National Contribution of the Member States (Italy and Malta).

All Italian and Maltese beneficiaries receive reimbursement of the Community share represented by 85% of the expenses actually incurred by the beneficiaries and considered eligible under the subsequent checks and verifications.

Italian public beneficiaries and Italian public law bodies also receive the reimbursement of the share of the National Contribution (15%) of the expenses actually incurred by the beneficiaries and considered admissible as part of the subsequent checks and verifications as a result of CIPE Resolution (Delibera CIPE) N. 10 of January 28, 2015.

Maltese Public beneficiaries receive reimbursement of the share of the National Contribution (15%) of the expenses actually incurred by the beneficiaries and considered eligible as part of the subsequent checks and verifications as a result of Circular n. 5/2014 of the MFIN.

Italian and Maltese private beneficiaries as well as Maltese public law bodies do not receive any reimbursement of the share  of the National Contribution (15%) which therefore remains the responsibility of the beneficiary o guaranteed by another public body (s).

The project can have a maximum duration of 9 months, so the proposed capitalization actions must be punctual, concrete and immediately ready for implementation. It is understood, in any case, that the expenses that will not be actually incurred (receipted) by the date of 31/12/2023 will not be considered eligible in line with the provisions of Reg. (EU) n. 1303/2013 and therefore will not be reimbursed by the Managing Authority.

It is recommended to indicate January the 2nd, 2023 as the start date and September the 30th, 2023 as the project closure date, considering that the selection procedure provides for a duration of about three months from the deadline expiry date for projects submission (September the 12th, 2022).

Each individual project must provide for an overall budget (ERDF + CN) ranging from a minimum of € 150,000 and a maximum of € 1,000,000.

The Beneficiaries of the capitalization actions are the same who make up the partnerships of the projects already funded by the INTERREG V-A Italia-Malta Programme and who intend to activate an operation for capitalization actions.

It is therefore possible both to confirm the whole partnership and to confirm only a part of the original partnership.

The entry of new potential beneficiaries is also allowed, demonstrating the degree of consistency of the new potential beneficiary with respect to proposed capitalization actions; its immediate ability to be operational both within the partnership and with respect to the start of activities; its spending power. This information must be clearly described and deducible from Section B.1 (Managerial skills, issues, role and tasks of the partner) of the Application Form (Annex 1.a).

With specific reference to the role of lead partner, Notice n. 3/2022 does not provide for any specific prescription leaving the choice to confirm or replace the lead partner.

However, it is recommended to carefully evaluate the hypothesis of replacing the lead partner in the light of the functions and duties provided for by art. 13 of the Reg (EU) n. 1299/2014.

All potential beneficiaries of the capitalization projects (lead partner and partner) must have their head and / or operational headquarters, including administrative competence, in the eligible territory (Sicily and Malta).

Where the registered office is not located within the programme area, the beneficiary is required to demonstrate the existence, in the eligible territory identified by the programme, of a "permanent office" or an operational and administrative structure equipped with adequate specific equipment and qualified personnel for the execution of the activities related to its institutional mission.

In addition, the beneficiary must ensure the maintenance of the "permanent office", in the eligible territory, for at least 5 years beyond the project end date.

Potential beneficiaries must have a legal status among those listed below:

• Public bodies:"Contracting authorities" within the meaning of Article 2, paragraph 1, number 1 of the Directive 2014/24 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council;
• Bodies governed by public law within Article 2, paragraph 1, number 1 of the Directive 2014/24 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council;
• Private entities, provided they have legal personality.

Documents  for the project to be submitted consist of the following:

1. Application form: form (Annex 1.a) and budget (Annex n. 1.b Axes I, II and III). ;
2. Letter of intent and co-financing lead partner/ partner (Annex A);
3. Letter of co-financing in favour of the private partner (Annex B), where relevant;
4. State aid declaration and its sub-annexes (Annex C and Annex C-Section C.1);
5. Copy (front and back) of a valid identity document of the lead partner and of each partner;
6. Formal administrative act of approval of the project proposal by the lead partner;
7. Any permissions or authorizations, where relevant;
8. Statutes of the entity (certified copy), for private entities and bodies governed by public law only;
9. Last two approved balance sheets, for private entities and bodies governed by public law only.

The Application Form (Annex 1.a and Annex 1.b Axes I, II and III) must be signed and stamped by the legal representative of the lead partner.

The letter of intent and co-financing lead partner / partner (Annex A) must be signed and stamped by each beneficiary of the project.

The letter of co-financing in favour of the private partner (Annex B), where relevant, must be signed and stamped by the legal representative of the co-financing body which undertakes to guarantee the funding corresponding to 15% of the budget allocated to the private partner, as a national contribution.

The State aid declaration (Annex C) and any Annex C - Section 1 DE MINIMIS Declaration, where relevant, must be signed and stamped by each beneficiary of the project (public, body governed by public, private law).

The formal administrative act of approval of the project proposal (Decree, Determination, Resolution, formal letter, etc.) must be signed by the competent decision-making body of the institutional structure of the Lead Partner.

The Italian beneficiaries will sign the documentation through digital signature.

The Maltese beneficiaries will sign the documentation and scan the duly signed documents.

All beneficiaries who sign the aforementioned documents will send a double-sided copy of an identity document.

The application form can be drawn up alternatively in one of the official languages ​of programme: Italian or English. A summary of the project must be provided in the other language, by filling in section A.2 of the Application form (Annex 1.a).

The submission of  project proposals must be carried out by the potential project leadpartner, electronically (by mail to department.programmazione@certmail.regione.sicilia.it). The mail must include the following wording:

INTERREG V-A Italia Malta - Avviso Pubblico 3/2022 - Azioni di capitalizzazione dei risultati dei progetti di cooperazione finanziati dal programma.

A project in the context of Notice n. 03/2022 can be submitted starting from the date of publication of the relative communication in the Gazzetta Ufficiale della Regione Siciliana (Sicilian Region Official Journal).

The programme authorities will disseminate widely the official date of submission of projects and will publish  specific news in the dedicated section of the programme website: www.italiamalta.eu.

The deadline currently foreseen for the submission of project proposals is September the 12th, 2022, before 12:00am. For this purpose, the date and time indicated in the e-mail will be considered valid.

The financial resources (ERDF and NC) made available by the programme following the funding of a project are disbursed exclusively as reimbursement of expenses actually incurred by the beneficiaries and considered eligible under Delegated Regulation (EU) n. 481 of the Commission European of March 4, 2014 by the competent bodies of the programme.

The Managing Authority pays the ERDF share for the reimbursement of each partner to the lead partner. The lead partner will promptly transfer and in any case no later than 30 days the respective ERDF shares to the partner, according to the expenses actually incurred, validated by the first level controller e verified by the Managing Authority. The lead partner is responsible to prove to the MA the transfer of the ERDF resources.

The Managing Authority will also reimburse the share of the national contribution in the case of Italians partners entitled under CIPE Resolution N. 10 of January 28, 2015 (public bodies and bodies governed by public Law).

Each beneficiary (Lead Partner and Partner), therefore, must ensure the necessary financial resources for the start of project activities.

It is provided for an advance of resources equal to 50% of the ERDF of each partner within the approved project. The next tranche of advance, equal to 30% of the budget, will be disbursed to partners who will have spent and certified the entire sum previously advanced.

In the case of State Aid, the advance that will be paid, upon the issue of a specific guarantee to the MA, will be in line with the requirements of Art. 131. 4 (b) of Reg. 1303/2013 which establishes, among other things, that the “advances do not exceed 40 % of the total amount of the aid to be granted to a beneficiary for a given operation".

The Managing Authority disburses the ERDF share relating to any advance to the lead partner. The lead partner will promptly transfer and in any case no later than 30 days the respective ERDF shares to partner, depending on the advance received from the Managing Authority.

The Managing Authority will also provide for the advance of the share of the national contribution in the case of Italian partners entitled under CIPE Resolution n. 10 of January 28, 2015 (public bodies and public law bodies).

Any delay by the MA regarding the disbursement of the advance, cannot in no way be recalled by the beneficiaries (Lead Partner and Partner) of the project as an impediment to the achievement of both the spending targets and the related results and outputs for each Work package, as well as required by the "subsidy agreement" and the "partnership agreement".

The expenses submitted by beneficiaries must necessarily be included in one of the following categories of expenditure described in the relevant ways:

• Staff costs – amount calculated on a flat-rate basis equal to 15% of the direct costs other than the staff costs of this operation (Art. 19 Reg 1299/2013), namely, "travel and accommodation costs", "External expertise and services costs " and "Equipment expenditure ".
• Office and administrative expenditure – amount calculated on the basis of a flat rate of 10% of staff costs (Art. 68 para 1 letter b Reg (EU) n. 1303/2013).
• Travel and accommodation costs – amount calculated on the basis of the actual costs documented for the purposes of the project and whose total amount may not exceed the maximum percentage of 2% of the total cost of the project.
• External expertise and services costs - amount calculated on the basis of the actual costs documented for the purposes of the project and for the first level controls (referred to in Article 125(4)(a) of regulation (EU) n. 1303/2013).
• Equipment expenditure - amount calculated on the basis of the real costs documented for the purposes of the project.

The selection of operations takes place on the basis of specific criteria described in the document called “Annex 1 - Selection criteria of the operations - Public Notice n. 03/2022".

Selection criteria for operations concern the following areas of verification and evaluation:

• Verification of formal admissibility requirements - Preliminary investigation of project proposals aimed at verifying both compliance with the formal eligibility requirements (administrative requirements of submission of the application and the application dossier / Application Form), and the existence of the requirements general admissibility (essential characteristics) of the proposals themselves as governed by the programme and public notice for the selection of capitalization actions of the results of the projects cooperation financed by the INTERREG V - A Italia Malta programme"
• Qualitative evaluation (strategic assessment) of project proposals - Verification of project proposals in order to ascertain the strategic evaluation of the capitalization actions.

Operations that have not passed the verification phase of the formal admissibility requirements (A) will not be eligible for the quality evaluation phase of project proposals (B).

Operations that have not score a minimum of 60 in the following strategic evaluation criteria, will be immediately rejected:

1.1 - Eligibility for capitalization (minimum required score 20);

1.2 - Capitalization effectiveness of  (minimum required score 20);

1.3 - Size and cross-border character of capitalization actions (minimum score required 20);

The document called “Annex 1 – Selection criteria for operations - Public Notice n. 03/2022" indicates the relative section for each criterion for assessing the quality of the project proposals of the application form (Annexes 1.a and 1.b) in which the requested information must be reported.

The evaluation process will last about three months and will presumably end in the second half of December 2022.

In the field of State aid, the reference legislation is that relating to the de minimis scheme in line with the provisions of Commission Regulation (EU) N. 1407/2013 of December 18, 2013 relating to it the application of Articles 107 and 108 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to "de minimis " aid.

All potential beneficiaries of the projects are required, during the submission of the project proposal to carry out a self-assessment of the planned activities in order to determine whether they  are relevant in relation to State aid (Annex C and Annex C-Section 1, if relevant).

In the context of the INTERREG V-A Italia-Malta programme, activities relevant to State aid will be assessed from time to time by the programme authorities.

In this regard, it should be noted that, pursuant to art. 107 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union, State aid is aid granted by the State, or through State resources, in any form which, favoring certain enterprises or certain productions, distort or threaten to distort competition by favoring the exercise or production of certain goods / services to the extent that they affect the trade between Member states.

The main elements inherent in the definition of State Aid are:

1. the existence of a company performing an economic activity;
2. the responsibility of financing through state resources;
3. the granting of an advantage;
4. the specific nature of measures;
5. the possible distortion effect on competition as well as on the internal UE market.

It should be noted that the five criteria are cumulative and therefore all five elements must be adequately assessed to determine whether the measure is to be considered State aid. In line with art. 1 of Annex 1 to Commission Regulation (EU) No. 651/2014 of 17 June 2014, is considered enterprise any entity that carries out an economic activity, regardless of its legal form.

Economic activities are all activities consisting in the offer of goods or services on the open market to competition. Activities carried out within the framework of statutory tasks normally performed by public authorities are not covered in the notion of business, in view of the non-commercial purposes of public bodies. Nonetheless, in the assessment of the existence of potential state aid, the legal nature of the beneficiary is irrelevant since also eg. a non-profit organization can carry out an economic activity.

For the above, the element to be taken into consideration is the nature of the activities that the beneficiary project partner intends to implement through programme resources.

When such economic activities financed with public resources create a selective advantage for an entity that, under normal free market conditions and without public financing, would not have been obtained, then State aid is configured. This is due to the fact that the performance of such activities affects the free competition principle and determines an effect that distorts the free market principle within the European Union.

It should be noted that state aid implications also apply in the event that the entity is relieved of the costs that it would have incurred in the context of its ordinary activities and in the absence of public funding.