FantasticSearch

Definitions For the purposes of this Regulation, the following definitions apply:

(1) ‘applicant’ means a natural person or an entity with or without legal personality who has submitted an application in a grant award procedure, in a non-financial donation award procedure or in a contest for prizes;

(2) ‘application document’ means a tender, a request to participate, an application further to a call for expression of interest, a grant application, an application for a non-financial donation or an application in a contest for prizes;

(3) ‘award procedure’ means a procurement procedure, a grant award procedure, a contest for prizes, an award procedure for a non-financial donation or a procedure for the selection of experts or persons or entities implementing the budget pursuant to Article 62(1), first subparagraph, point (c);

(4) ‘basic act’ means a legal act, other than a recommendation or an opinion, which provides a legal basis for an action and for the implementation of the corresponding expenditure entered in the budget or of the budgetary guarantee or financial assistance backed by the budget, and which may take any of the following forms:

(a) in implementation of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom Treaty), the form of a regulation, a directive or a decision within the meaning of Article 288 TFEU; or (b) in implementation of Title V of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), one of the forms specified in Articles 28(1) and 31(2), Article 33, and Articles 42(4) and 43(2) TEU;

(5) ‘beneficiary’ means a natural person or an entity with or without legal personality with whom a grant agreement has been signed;

(6) ‘blending facility or platform’ means a cooperation framework established between the Commission and development or other public finance institutions with a view to combining non-repayable forms of support and/or financial instruments and/or budgetary guarantees from the budget and repayable forms of support from development or other public finance institutions, as well as from private-sector finance institutions and private-sector investors;

(7) ‘budget implementation’ means the carrying out of activities relating to the management, monitoring, control and auditing of budget appropriations in accordance with the methods provided for in Article 62;

(8) ‘budgetary commitment’ means the operation by which the authorising officer responsible reserves the budget appropriations necessary to cover subsequent payments to honour legal commitments;

(9) ‘budgetary guarantee’ means an instrument through which the Union supports a programme of actions by taking on the budget an irrevocable and unconditional financial obligation that can be called upon should a specified event materialise during the implementation of the programme, and that remains valid for the duration of the maturity of the commitments made under the supported programme;

(10) ‘building contract’ means a contract covering the purchase, exchange, long lease, usufruct, leasing, rental or hire purchase, with or without option to buy, of land, buildings or other immovable property. It covers both existing buildings and buildings before completion provided that the candidate has obtained a valid building permit for it. It does not cover buildings designed in accordance with the specifications of the contracting authority that are covered by works contracts;

(11) ‘candidate’ means an economic operator that has sought an invitation or has been invited to take part in a restricted procedure, a competitive procedure with negotiation, a competitive dialogue, an innovation partnership, a design contest or a negotiated procedure;

(12) ‘central purchasing body’ means a contracting authority providing centralised purchasing activities and, where applicable, ancillary purchasing activities;

(13) ‘check’ means the verification of a specific aspect of a revenue or expenditure operation;

(14) ‘concession contract’ means a contract for pecuniary interest concluded in writing between one or more economic operators and one or more contracting authorities within the meaning of Articles 177 and 181, in order to entrust the execution of works or the provision and management of services to an economic operator (the ‘concession’), and where:

(a) the remuneration consists either solely in the right to exploit the works or services or in that right together with payment;

(b) the award of the concession contract involves the transfer to the concessionaire of an operating risk in exploiting those works or services encompassing demand risk or supply risk, or both. The concessionaire shall be deemed to assume an operating risk where, under normal operating conditions, there is no guarantee of recouping the investments made or the costs incurred in operating the works or the services concerned;

(15) ‘constitution phase’ means the period during which the global provisioning is paid into the common provisioning fund;

(16) ‘contingent liability’ means a potential financial obligation that could be incurred depending on the outcome of a future event;

(17) ‘contract’ means a public contract or a concession contract or, for Title VIII, a subcontract or purchase contract concluded by a beneficiary;

(18) ‘contractor’ means an economic operator with whom a public contract has been signed;

(19) ‘contribution agreement’ means an agreement concluded with persons or entities implementing Union funds pursuant to Article 62(1), first subparagraph, points (c)(ii) to (viii);

(20) ‘control’ means any measure taken to provide reasonable assurance regarding the effectiveness, efficiency and economy of operations, the reliability of reporting, the safeguarding of assets and information, the prevention and detection and correction of fraud and irregularities and their follow-up, and the adequate management of the risks relating to the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions, taking into account the multiannual character of programmes as well as the nature of the payments concerned. Controls may involve various checks, as well as the implementation of any policies and procedures to achieve the objectives referred to in the first sentence;

(21) ‘counterpart’ means the party that is granted a budgetary guarantee;

(22) ‘crisis’ means:

(a) a situation of immediate or imminent danger threatening to escalate into an armed conflict or to destabilise a country or its neighbourhood;

(b) a situation caused by natural disasters, man-made crisis such as wars and other conflicts or extraordinary circumstances having comparable effects related, inter alia, to climate change, public and animal health, food security and food safety emergencies and global health threats, such as epidemics and pandemics, environmental degradation, privation of access to energy and natural resources or extreme poverty;

(23) ‘decommitment’ means an operation whereby the authorising officer responsible cancels wholly or partly the reservation of appropriations previously made by means of a budgetary commitment;

(24) ‘dynamic purchasing system’ means a completely electronic process for making commonly used purchases of items generally available on the market;

(25) ‘economic operator’ means any natural or legal person, including a public entity, or a group of such persons, who offers to supply products, execute works or provide services or supply immovable property;

(26) ‘equity investment’ means the provision of capital to a company, invested directly or indirectly in return for total or partial ownership of that company and where the equity investor may assume some management control of the company and may share the company’s profits;

(27) ‘European office’ means an administrative structure set up by the Commission, or by the Commission with one or more other Union institutions, to perform specific cross-cutting tasks;

(28) ‘final administrative decision’ means a decision of an administrative authority having final and binding effect in accordance with the applicable law;

(29) ‘financial asset’ means any asset in the form of cash, an equity instrument of a publicly or privately held entity or a contractual right to receive cash or another financial asset from such entity;

(30) ‘financial instrument’ means a Union measure of financial support provided from the budget to address one or more specific policy objectives of the Union which may take the form of equity or quasi-equity investments, loans or guarantees, or other risk-sharing instruments, and which may, where appropriate, be combined with other forms of financial support or with funds under shared management or funds of the European Development Fund (EDF);

(31) ‘financial liability’ means a contractual obligation to deliver cash or another financial asset to another entity;

(32) ‘foreign subsidy’ means a financial contribution within the meaning of Article 3(2) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2560 provided by a third country that falls within the description provided in Article 3(1) of that Regulation;

(33) ‘framework contract’ means a public contract concluded between one or more economic operators and one or more contracting authorities, the purpose of which is to establish the terms governing specific contracts under it to be awarded during a given period, in particular with regard to price and, where appropriate, the quantity envisaged;