Background

Liberties is a network of national-level organizations in 23 EU Member States with a mission to support and encourage the EU and the Member States to respect, protect and promote the values in Article 2 of the Treaty on the EU by supporting civil society organizations' active at local, regional, national levels. Our activities foster solidarity through capacity-building on communications and litigation, collaborating on research, advocacy, awareness-raising, and dissemination activities on EU-wide issues, individually and in synergy with other transnational organizations. Liberties prioritize the topics of the Rule of law, democracy and justice, civic space, populist authoritarianism, media freedom and freedom of expression, privacy, data protection, mass surveillance, artificial intelligence, and fundamental rights in the digital sphere. Liberties’ work to strengthen the impact of its Members at the national level contributes to the implementation of rights in other EU policy areas. Building on Liberties’ achievements so far, the activities of STRIVE will (1) Foster the network’s ability to provide an expert contribution to the promotion and protection of Union values, (2) Strengthen and expand the network, (3) Build Members’ capacity to maximize impacts of their work (4) Boost public awareness and engagement on EU values and how to protect them.

Goals

Liberties' specific objectives for the year 2025 are in support of three essential components of our mission: network development, capacity building, and expert contribution to the rights and values in the EU - in line with our strategic objectives as defined previously in the framework proposal:

●Specific Objective 1 (SO1): Providing expert contribution to the promotion and protection of fundamental rights and Union values in the EU

●Specific Objective 2 (SO2): Strengthening and expanding the network

●Specific Objective 3 (SO3): Building Members’ capacity to maximize impacts on the ground

●Specific Objective 4 (SO4): Boost value-based information and dissemination for enhanced public engagement on rights and values

Regranting Areas and Objectives

The regranting in the scope of CERV-STRIVE 2025 has the following specific objectives:

-Support national initiatives to strengthen capacity building for using the Charter of Fundamental Rights and EU Law at the national level.

-Promote national initiatives that advance research and enhance the Charter's role in fundamental rights litigation and its integration into newly adopted EU laws.

-Foster national initiatives that utilize the Charter through strategic campaigns focused on fundamental rights litigation, guided by recommendations and findings from annual Rule of Law reports (EC and Liberties reports).

Expected results

●Establishment of strong partnerships among national initiatives focused on utilizing the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

●Enhanced national research and improved positioning of the Charter in fundamental rights litigation.

●Expanded advocacy efforts and campaigns leveraging the Charter to advance the findings of Rule of Law reports.

Timeframe for project implementation

The duration of the supported initiatives will be a maximum of 6 months.

The selection process for applications received in response to his Call for Applications is planned to be finalized by the first of April 2025 and the start of the approved projects is planned for June 2025 at the latest. Liberties reserve the right to change the timeline of the application process, as the evaluation period may vary depending on the number of applicants received and following the EC guidance of the process.

Financial frame

The total amount made available under the Call for Project Proposals is EUR 130.000.

Size of grants:

Any grant requested under this Call must fall between the following minimum and maximum amounts:

●  minimum amount: EUR 10,000,00 (including the audit costs of the project),

●  maximum amount: EUR 20.000,00 (including the audit costs of the project).

Eligible and non-eligible costs

Eligible costs for funding are:

-Generally eligible expenditures that comply with the principles of sound financial management (principles of economy, efficiency, and effectiveness)

-Reasonable, justifiable and consistent as per the approved budget

-Directly related to the objectives and activities of the program

-Presented and supported by valid documentation (Certificate of financial statement)

-Incurred during the project, from the start date to the end date specified by the contract

Non-eligible costs are:

-Direct litigation costs (e.g. legal fees)

-Activities already financed through other EU contracts

-Debts and debt service charges

-Provisions for losses or potential future liabilities

-Purchase of land, buildings, and vehicles

-Costs for profitable activities

-Cost incurred before the contract signature

-Credits to third parties

-Any other non-eligible costs defined in the grant contract

Eligibility of applicants

Organizations must be members of Liberties, a European network that is a beneficiary of a Framework Partnership Agreement under the call CERV-2021-OG-FPA.

They must be legal entities, non-profit organizations.

Organizations must be established in a Member State of the European Union, including its overseas countries and territories (OCTs).

They are required to uphold EU values as defined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Member organizations cannot act as affiliated entities, associated partners, subcontractors, or part of other EU-wide networks or umbrella organizations.

Grants will be awarded to Liberties members with a clear mission and demonstrated experience in the thematic priorities of this Call.

Priority will be given to proposals that directly or indirectly incorporate lessons learned from the Charter training sessions conducted by Liberties in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

APPLICATION PROCESS

To support high-quality applications and to optimize the selection process, the application process for the regranting will have one stage:

1) FULL APPLICATION approval stage - Submitted Full Applications will be reviewed and evaluated by three independent experts/evaluators. After the full proposals’ evaluation, the Selection Committee will decide on the grants’ recipients. (Application form to download here. Budget template to download here.)

2) Applications need to be submitted at liberties@liberties.eu with the title STRIVE 2025 application, all relevant questions need to be submitted to the same email address before March 3, 2025.

Number of applications and grants per applicant

A member organization may not submit more than 1 application under this call for applications.

PUBLIC CALL TIMELINE

*Tentative plan

EVALUATION CRITERIA

EVALUATION PROCESS AND CRITERIA

As part of the administrative evaluation, Liberties reserves the right to verify information and documents submitted by applicants, with authorized providers of such services.

The administrative and eligibility compliance check will be conducted by Liberties staff, and only the applications that pass this check will be provided to the evaluators for assessment. The assessment of the applications performed by the evaluators will be used by Liberties in the process of selecting the best proposals.

Before the commencement of the evaluation procedure, the evaluators should have become acquainted with the Guidelines for Applicants for the respective Call, and the guidelines for evaluation that Liberties will provide to them.

The evaluators shall provide an unbiased assessment of the substance of the project’s applications evaluated. They will provide scores for each application evaluated. Based on the scores assigned to each application form, Liberties will be able to identify the best applications that will be considered for funding. Each evaluator shall fill in and sign a detailed evaluation grid for each application proposal evaluated. They must provide a comment for each subsection of the evaluation grid and a summary of the assessments, including comments on the strengths and weaknesses of each full application.

Each application must be assessed on its own merits and not by comparing different applications. Evaluators are expected to bring their own experience of the sector and project implementation to the evaluation of each proposal.

The evaluators shall perform their tasks fairly and impartially, adhering to the rules on impartiality, confidentiality, and prevention of conflict of interest.

The evaluators are bound by a Declaration of Impartiality and Confidentiality to be signed before starting the assessment. If an evaluator believes there might be a situation of conflict of interest concerning one or more applicants, they must inform the contracting authority immediately.

Also, strict confidentiality is required from the evaluators involved in the implementation of this contract, notably on the assessments of individual applications.

The application will be evaluated against the criteria set below. The evaluation will be conducted by three independent evaluators with proven knowledge and record of the region and fundamental rights issues.

The application will receive an overall score out of 50 maximum points using the breakdown in the evaluation grid below.

The evaluation criteria are divided into headings and subheadings. Each subheading will be given a score between 1 and 5 as follows: 1 = very poor; 2 = poor; 3 = adequate; 4 = good; 5 = very good.