På en workshop i Budapest 21. januar 2009 delte en gruppe på 36 evaluatorer sine erfaringer. Her er deres tips

The most important do’s and don’ts for applicants

• Read the work programme thoroughly.
• Be very specific and focused rather than too broad and too ambitious and give concrete examples.
• Be careful when ‘recycling’ a former proposal (copy/paste), you might end up with something inconsistent.
• Do not underestimate the importance of the criterion ‘impact’. The impact section should be elaborated and covered very well.
• Show (in 10 pages or less) you know the state of the art and show you go beyond it.
• Proofread your own proposal and let a colleague read it.
• Try to read and score your proposal in 2 hours like the evaluators do.
• Write a proposal because you have an idea – not because there is an open call.
• Give it to an English speaker for linguistic corrections.
• Be up front and do not try to hide anything.
• Show you really can achieve the objectives.
• Elaborate what each partner is doing.
• Expose that the project is European and not national and how it will add value to the EU.

• If someone feels too confident on his own impact and importance and constitutes that he will solve everything and the project will be good for everyone.
• If the technical part is not well supported by literature.
• If the consortium is poor or too big and fails to show how the members will work together.
• If one is being too generic and gives unsubstantiated statements. That leads to a lack of clarity.
• If the project is to low-risk.
• If the scope of the proposal is too narrow and covers only a very small part of the work programme.
• If there is a lack of detail of what will be done after the project.
• If there are discrepancies between the work plan and what they have said they will do.

Merk også at evaluatorene rapporterte at de typisk bruker 2 timer på en STREP søknad og 3 timer på en IP. Det er kritisk at søknaden er klar og lettlest. Bruk tabeller og diagrammer for å hjelpe evaluatoren fange hovedpoengene raskt.