Financial data (IGJ, ETC) | 2014 Support Materials MS

When an object is returned by the Commission in SFC2014 it will display as 'Current node' -> 'European Commission'. This is because the version that has been returned is no longer editable by the Member state and they must create a new version of the object in order to edit the information.

The Sending of information by a Member State to the Commission should be electronically signed in accordance with Directive 1999/93/EC.

Sending of the different objects is generating a snapshot document and after the sending an acknowledge
document is generated by the European Commission.

This acknowledge document is signed but the Member State was not signing the snapshot document. The EU Login now provides a functionality of signing without forcing the user to have a certificate. The action to sign will only be triggered when sending to the European Commission:

(1) Enter your SFC2014 Password

(2) Click on the 'Sign' button

The Signature is…

• When data is sent to the Commission, the sender receives an automatic notification from SFC2014
• On the search screen list of Programmes, Payment Applications etc, and in the 'General' section of the object under 'version information', check that the "current node" column is "Commission" and the "status" is "sent".
• In each object (excluding Standalone/referring documents) a snapshot document is added to the 'associated documents' section of the object.
• For single documents, check that the "sent date" is not empty.

- The Object has been sent to the Commission already which means you cannot delete it anymore.

- The Object has not been sent to the Commission yet but it contains a document of type 'Other MS document' which has already been sent to the Commission. In this case you cannot delete the Object anymore.

SFC2014 enforces the "four-eyes" principle, which means that the user who last validated the Object cannot submit it. Two different users are required; one to validate and another to send.

According to Article 3(2) of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 184/2014, “any transmission of information to the Commission shall be verified and submitted by a person other than the person who entered the data for that transmission. This separation of tasks shall be supported by SFC2014 or by Member State’s management and control information systems connected automatically with SFC2014.”

The text boxes provided in SFC2014 follow the official templates. The limits are defined by the Commission implementing act and cannot be extended.

You can provide additional information in other documents which may help the Commission in its assessment of the programme by adding an 'Other Member State document' type in the document section. However, according to article 2(2) of Commission implementing regulation 184/2014 you cannot make references to this in the programme and the additional information will not form part of the programme covered by the Commission decision.

Article 2

Content of electronic data exchange system

1. The electronic data exchange system (hereinafter referred to as ‘SFC2014’) shall contain at least information specified in the models, formats and templates established in accordance with Regulation (EU) No 1303/2013, Regulation (EU) No 1299/2013, Regulation (EU) No 1305/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 3 ) and the future Union legal act establishing the conditions for the financial support for maritime and fisheries policy for the programming period 2014-2020 (the ‘EMFF Regulation’).

2. The information provided in the electronic forms embedded in SFC2014 (hereinafter referred to as ‘structured data’) may not be replaced by non-structured data, including the use of hyperlinks or other types of non-structured data such as attachment of documents or images. Where a Member State transmits the same information in the form of structured data and non-structured data, the structured data shall be used in case of inconsistencies.

The size limit per file is 500MB.

There is no limit on the number of files or the total size of all files in an object.

The following file extensions are allowed:

".7z",".bmp",".csv",".docm",".docx", ".jpeg",".jpg",".msg",".ods",".odt",".pdf",".png",".ppt",".pptx,".rar", ".rtf",".tif",".tiff",".txt",".xlsb",".xlsm",".xlsx",".zip",".gif"

IMPORTANT INFORMATION as of May 2024 :

Compression formats will be removed from the whitelist and will not be allowed as attachments anymore. This includes formats such as .zip, .z01, .z02, .7zip, .rar, .tar, .gz …

GIS file formats, as well as the following formats, are added to the whitelist and will be allowed: .asice, .adoc, .bdoc, .cdoc, .ddoc, .edoc.

The content of a programme can be seen by an EC user even before it is submitted to the Commission. This is to help the Member States during the amendments process.

Documents can only be consulted when they are sent. This is because documents do not have a full workflow as is the case for the structured data and their content is unknown and could contain sensible data which the Member State doesn't want the Commission to know before it is officially submitted.

Therefore, the "Other MS document" type and the "Informal Commission's Observations" document type were foreseen, so that the Member States could send whatever they want to send during the amendment process on an informal basis and the Commission could send them their observations already before the official submission.

Unfortunately this is a problem in the Microsoft Edge browser, not in SFC2014.

The browser doesn't recognize it's a .pdf file. As a workaround you should save the file and give it the name and extension as indicated on the screen, then you will be able to open it in your downloads folder.

The acknowledgement of receipt is signed with an electronic certificate guaranteeing the date and time of the signature as well as the integrity of this document. The certificate used to sign this document is held by the European Commission and can be verified by the corresponding public key.

The first step to validate the signature is to install the certificate in Acrobat.

(This step is only necessary once per machine)

• First download the SFC certificate file named CertExchangeSFCRootCA.FDF.
• Decompress the zip file and store the certificate on your computer.
• Open Acrobat.
• Go to File > Open and select the certificate from your computer.
• A pop up will be displayed. Click "Set Contact Trust…":

• On the next screen specify that this is a trusted root certificate by checking the option "Use this certificate as a trusted root" and click OK.

• A confirmation message will confirm the import. Click OK and close Acrobat.

Once a document has been sent (there is a date visible in the 'sent date' column) it cannot be deleted.

However, if you are the sender of the document you may choose to 'hide' a sent document so that it is no longer visible within your programme by following the steps below:

1. In the Documents section of your OP (1) select the document from the list (2) and click the Edit button (3):

2. In the Document Details pop-up select the document you wish to hide (1)…

If a Commission user cannot see the other documents you uploaded, this is because these are type 'Other Member State Document' and are sent independently (as you can see below there is no 'sent date') of the Object (PA, OP, RDP IR etc.).

The following steps should be taken for each document in order for them to be sent to the EC:

Select the document to be sent (1) and click on the edit button (2):

Click on the Update &Send link to send the document to the EC:

The Financial Data should only be submitted if the EC Decision Date of the Programme is before the Submission Due Date, i.e.:

31/01 of YYYY for YYYY01

31/07 of YYYY for YYYY02

31/10 of YYYY for YYYY03

Example 1

My OP is adopted on 24/02/2015 and the EC Decision Date is 01/12/2014.

Yes, you have to submit version 201501 of the Financial Data as the EC Decision Date < 31/01/2015.

Example 2

My OP is adopted on 24/02/2015 and the EC Decision Date is 05/02/2015.

No, you don't have to submit the first version (201501) of the Financial Data because the EC Decision Date > 31/01/2015. The application checks the combination of CCI and version and raises an error when you try to create the version 201501. In this case you should only submit the Financial Data from 30/06/2015* onwards.

* You can create the Financial Data 1 month before the submission due date.

The regulation says "the Member State shall submit". So, this means that the programme authorities involved need to coordinate who enters and who sends the dossier. It is a single transmission with a single model in the implementing act and it cannot be split in two!

For example the Certifying Authority (CA) can provide the forecast and the Managing Authority (MA) can provide the implementation data and then they have to decide who will send it to the Commission, keeping in mind that not all Tables have to be provided for each submission period (CA is not involved in the 31/10 submission).

It is actually only "ERDF" or "ESF" that should be used under fund (even for REACT-EU priority axis), the priority in the programme then determines if it concerns REACT-EU or not.

Formatting:

• You must download the Categorisation Sheet Template and do not change the formatting
  • Check there is no space after the text or digits entered. You should remove the space (in each cell) and upload the sheet again
  • Before data entry into the spreadsheet, ensure that the cells in columns A-R are formatted as Text, in columns S to U - Number with 2 decimal points, in column V - number with no decimal point
  • When copying/pasting the information into the Categorisation Sheet please only enter values/data into the cells you require to be edited: do not change the headings or the font or size of the text and only use the copy and 'paste special' function and paste only as values
  • Do not re-arrange the columns

Codes:

• Check that the combinations of codes under Priority Axis, Fund, and Category of Region match those defined in the associated Operational Programme. There's no Category of Region for ETC programmes.
• Check that the Thematic Objective Dimension (column H) matches those defined in the associated Operational Programme
• The codes should be entered into the categorisation sheet as a 2-digit sequence - so "01" instead of "1" (this is also the same for code "0", which should be entered as "00") with the exception of the Priority Axis column which should be encoded exactly the same as it is in the Operational Programme.
• Check that the combinations of codes in columns A to R are unique
• Use the…