As a general rule, 30 calendar days following the entry into force of the Agreement, ECHO will pay a first pre-financing equivalent to the 80% of the total amount of its contribution.

In case ECHO is late with the payment, the rule concerning the late payment interest will apply.

Different pre-financing rates can be applied by ECHO taking into account the specificities of the action, e.g.:

• the duration of the action;

• the difficult operating contexts, where there is a risk that the Action can be suspended or terminated (in order to allow the re-allocation of the un-spent amounts);

• the past performance of the partner in similar contexts;

• in case of partners with a financial threshold to limit the risks incurred by ECHO.

In these cases, ECHO may provide 50% (followed by a second pre-financing payment amounting to 30%) or a different configuration.

In general, the partner is informed directly with the Agreement at the Article 5. Furthermore, the partner is informed of its risk assessment status in APPEL (NGOs Only), and thus may expect that in case of a high risk rating the level of pre-financing may be adjusted.

When the pre-financing rate at contracting stage is not 80%, the partner can request a second pre-financing as soon as it is in position to declare that 70% of the amount received with the first pre-financing has been consumed.

The additional pre-financing request can be done in APPEL from the section “upload pre-financing request”; from here, the partner should download the template (available below) for the second pre-financing request. Once the request has been completed it has to be uploaded it in the same APPEL section and can be submitted to ECHO (here you can find more information).

The Commission will pay the new pre-financing instalment within 30 calendar days from the date of receipt of the request for a further pre-financing payment.

Please note that the partners do not have to reimburse the interest generated by the pre-financing. It can keep the interest and pledge to use them for humanitarian aid purpose.

Below you can find a table summarizing the flow of communication concerning the payments of the Action