MEDIUM AND MICRO PROJECT PROPOSALS – SECOND PHASE RESULTS ANNOUNCED

According to the decisions taken during the Selection Committee meetings held between 4 and 14 July, as well as the Approval Board session on the 17th, 47 medium projects (maximum grant amount 70,000 €) and 89 micro projects (maximum grant amount 20,000 €) will receive support in the following division among the thematic areas:

The detailed list of all supported projects is attached.

• Micro and medium projects

Thus, together with the grants distributed in the calls last year, 70% of the NGO Fund’s 11.6 million € grant amount is now allocated. Ökotárs Foundation, as the lead partner of the Operator consortium will contract all project promoters after negotiating and agreeing on the conditions of funding, the detailed workplans and budget during the coming two months. The newly awarded projects should be implemented in maximum 21 months. The above thematic areas are based on the goals and priorities defined by the donors, which strongly focus on democracy, good governance, equal opportunities and the inclusion of vulnerable social groups. The main difference between the medium and micro projects (apart from their size) will be that the former ones are expected to achieve a snowballing impact beyond the applicant organisation, affecting a broader segment and/or other organizations of the civil sector.

The new winners must face and will start their work in a difficult period: the Government Control Office is continuing its investigation it started at 58 earlier beneficiaries of the NGO Fund with requesting further data and documents, some of which would indeed cover to sensitive, private information. It is difficult to comprehend why these would be necessary to establish whether the Fund’s monies were used appropriately or not (especially in the case of still ongoing, unfinished projects). The secretariat of the EEA/Norway Grants, the Brussels-based Financial Mechanism Office (FMO) has already stated several times during the past one-and-half month that the Goverment Control Office should address all information requests to them (i.e. the FMO), as the program operator appointed in the bilateral Memorandum of Understanding between Hungary and the donor states. The latest letter of the FMO’s director to the Hungarian prime Minister’s Office again declares that until the investigation of NGOs is stopped, no new negotiations between the two parties can take place about the fate of the „big” EEA/Norway Grants amounting to 140 million €.

This affects the 9 program areas (that should be) operated by the Hungarian state administration, but which have been suspended since early May. However, there is no time to lose: all projects must be closed by 30 April 2016, while in most program areas no grant decisions have yet been made, not to mention contracted projects.

Meanwhile, the operation of the NGO Fund does not stop: after the recent grant decisions, launching of the third (and last) call for proposals int he programme is envisioned for September. This time, NGO project proposals can be submitted in two categories: medium project up to 50,000 € and micro ones up to 15,000 €, in the samr 7 thematic areas as above. The application process will again be two phase: after evaluating the short project concepts, approved applicants will have the opportunity to develop and submit theor full proposals. Eventual grant decisions are expected for early next year. The details of the call texts are presently being discussed between Ökotárs Foundation and the FMO.

Further information: Veronika Móra, +36-20/480-4328, move@okotars.hu