Declaration of Expenditure (EAFRD) | 2021 Support Materials MS

All Users who have the role MSPA (Paying Agency) or MSCB (Coordinating Body) on a Node (top or lower Node) where the Declaration EAFRD was created can download XML files for expenditure and sign for any paying agency. In fact, in terms of security, SFC2021 only recognizes that Users have the MSPA or MSCB role for a given Node, but it does not know that such a User actually serves a paying agency or not. Moreover, for reasons of flexibility/ease (as some MS do not have a Coordinating Body), there is no real distinction between the MSPA and MSCB roles, both can create, upload files, sign and send the Declaration EAFRD to the Commission. It is up to the Member State to ensure that the right people upload and sign for the right paying agencies, and also to ensure that the right person sends the Declaration to the Commission.

If some MS with several Paying Agencies want to submit a Declaration of Expenditure EAFRD inside which some Paying Agencies have nothing to declare/correct, then they have the choice between:

• not adding any XML files for these Paying Agencies. In this case, SFC2021 will not create a section for these Paying Agencies inside the Declaration and they will not have to sign for these Paying Agencies.
• adding one XML file for each of these Paying Agencies, containing one or several (one is enough but several can be added if needed) Budget code line(s) with amount/corrections declared=0 (only the Budget code and the Contribution rate should be filled). In this case, SFC2021 will create a section for each of these Paying Agencies, and each of them will have to provide a signature before submitting the Declaration to EC.

Each Paying Agency declaring amounts can upload one XML file for "Expenditure & Adjustments", "Open Advances", and "Financial Instruments". In the XML file header, there is a mandatory field (CATS code) that identifies the Paying Agency. The uploaded data will be displayed in SFC per Paying Agency.

Afterwards, each Paying Agency must sign individually before the Coordinating Body can submit the complete Declaration containing all data from all Paying Agencies for the CAP plan. This ensures that the Paying Agency and the reported amounts can always be identified.

It is important to note that the ceiling checks and ringfencing compliance are carried out for the CAP plan as a whole, and not per region or Paying Agency.

Paying Agencies having no amounts to declare can choose between two actions. Check this FAQ.

When an object is returned by the Commission in SFC2021 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.

To search for information in SFC2021 you have two options:

1. General search by CCI:

   Click on the search icon in the top-right of the SFC2021 screen:

   

   Enter the CCI number and the system will find all objects and documents linked to the CCI:

    

2. Search for a specific object version:

   Go to the menu for the object you wish to search for. Hover over the column headers and click on the icon with three lines on any of the columns:

   

   Then click on the filter icon and enter the filter/search criteria:

   

Take a look at our Tips &…

The SFC2021 Support Team is not in charge of subscribing/unsubscribing any of its Users for the reception of automatic notifications generated by the system.

There are 2 options to be automatically notified:

1. By Object:

   Provided that the 'object' is not a standalone document, the concerned user can add his/her email address in the General >  Officials in charge section of the object (e.g. Operational/National Programmes, Implementation Reports etc ). :

   

   To remove/edit a User, go to the appropriate section, select the Official in Charge from the list and Edit or Delete the record as required.

    

2. By combined criteria:

   Each User can subscribe to the Utilities > Event Registration in order to receive automatic notifications generated by SFC2021 and select different event types, groups and filter them by EU Fund and/or CCI (depending on the assigned roles of the user's account):

   

   A detailed guide and video…

• Import from Excel is only available for selected and very few tables. Wherever the functionality is active, it will be indicated in the Quick Guides available in the Support Material section of our Portal.
• Export to Excel (Excel and CSV formats) is available on all Tables: 1. Right click on the Table / 2. Export / 3. CSV or Excel Export

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SFC2021 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 69(9) of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 2021/1060 regarding the electronic data exchange system between the Member States and the Commission, one of the responsibilities of the Member State is “Ensuring the verification of information submitted by a person other than the person who entered the data for that transmission”

SFC2021 accepts a limited HTML formatting either when inputting the text or when a copy and paste is done. In order to count the characters, SFC2021 removes all HTML formatting tags, whitespaces, special characters that are non visible (like carriage return, tabulation/indentation, new line….) and only counts the remaining characters.

The rich text fields have no limitation concerning spaces. What needs to be respected is the number of characters without spaces.

Tip: Tools such as Word can be used to approximate as much as possible the SFC2021 character counting, only if the formatting is removed (I.e. save as plain text, format Unicode). 

It was decided that Member States should not be allowed to hide or delete sent documents in SFC2021. This is because once a document has been sent it is registered in many internal Commission workflow systems (and may trigger certain processes in these systems), and hiding or deleting in SFC2021 will not delete them in the other systems.

If the Member State sends the wrong document they should then send a correction document (if needed they will have to create a new version of the object and attach the new document).

The system requires that a document contains at least a MAIN or COVER_LETTER type of attachment.

If you want to attach a type “Annex” as the only attachment, you can give it the title "Annex", but the type should be MAIN.

Documents can either be Standalone documents or Referring documents. A Standalone document doesn't refer to anything. A Referring document refers to a CCI number or to an object existing in SFC2021.

For referential documents, when a CCI link is available it means that the document can be linked to a CCI number related to the type of document. CCI numbers are allocated before the related object is encoded in SFC2021. When a Programme (PRG) link is available it means that the document can be linked to a Programme already encoded in SFC2021.