A:

Please see the Financial Guidelines pages 144 and 146. We assume that you intend that the cost be recovered as personnel costs not subcontracting:

The Financial Guidelines state:

Personnel may include:

·          "Permanent employees", who have permanent working contracts with the contractor.

·          "Temporary employees", who have temporary working contracts with the contractor.

·          In certain circumstances, costs of personnel made available by a third party on the basis of a prior agreement may be considered as eligible costs to the project. However, the reimbursement of such costs depends on compliance with the provisions relating to the use of third party resources. In any event the time devoted by such a person can be taken into consideration in determining the resources used on the project."

The rate per hour in this case would be the contracted rate. Further, make sure that you comply with:

"They can be considered as personnel costs; regardless of whether the intra-muros consultants are self-employed or employed by a third party, if the following cumulative criteria are fulfilled:

·          The contractor has a contract to engage a physical person to work for it and some of that work involves tasks to be carried out under the EC project,

·          The physical person must work under the instructions of the contractor (i.e. the work is decided, designed and supervised by the contractor),

·          The physical person must work in the premises of the contractor,

·          The result of the work belongs to the contractor (Article II.32.3 of Annex II (General conditions) to the FP6 model contract,

·          The costs of employing the consultant are not significantly different from the personnel costs of employees of the same category working under labour law contract for the contractor.

·          Travel and subsistence costs related to such consultants ' participation in project  meetings or other travel relating to the project would have to be paid directly by the contractor in order to be eligible. Moreover only the actual costs of the consultant should be charged to the project."

From here it seems that the hourly rate must be comparable with the "normal" hourly (cost including employer's costs) rate for similar staff. We are not aware of an EU or Austrian rate, but some professional bodies in some states give guideline rates for their members.