Ethics review

Every proposal completes an ethics self-assessment in Part A, and every proposal is screened. It is not reserved for medical research: the screening covers human participants, personal data, animals, work in non-EU countries, environmental impact, artificial intelligence, and anything with potential for misuse or dual use.

Where the screening flags something, an ethics assessment follows, carried out by independent experts in parallel with the scientific evaluation. It can result in ETHICS REQUIREMENTS attached to the grant (an approval to obtain, a document to submit, a procedure to establish) and these become deliverables with deadlines.

Unmet ethics requirements have financial consequences. They can block payments, suspend parts of the work and, at the extreme, end the grant. A requirement to submit a national ethics committee approval in month six is not advisory, and national committees do not work to your project's timetable.

Personal data is where most non-medical projects meet this. Processing personal data brings the General Data Protection Regulation with it: a lawful basis, a data protection officer where required, data minimisation, retention limits, and rules on transfers outside the EU. A partner intending to scrape a social platform for a dataset should establish the lawful basis before writing the work package.

Answering the self-assessment honestly costs nothing and hiding an issue costs a great deal. Flagged proposals are not penalised in scoring (the assessment is separate from the scientific evaluation) while an issue discovered after the award becomes an amendment, a delay, or a suspended payment.