The Joint Technical Secretariat organized the 1st meeting of the Project Selection Committees of the Hungary-Slovakia-Romania-Ukraine ENPI CBC Programme 2007-2013 on the 2nd of February, 2010 in Budapest.

Three separate Project Selection Committees (PSCs) for each Priority has been set up according to the decision of the Joint Monitoring Committee in order to examine and evaluate the project proposals.

The opening session, administrative check as well as the verification of eligibility (Step 1) for the project proposals submitted within the 1st Call for Proposals (deadline was 22 September 2009) has been carried out by the Secretary of the PSCs with the support of the JTS staff. Based on the work performed by the JTS, Committees have drawn up their recommendations to the Joint Managing Authority (JMA) and the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) through an Evaluation Report for each Priority containing the result of the administrative and eligibility checks. The PSCs have taken their decisions independently from each other.

Evaluation Reports has been submitted to the JMA and JMC for endorsement. Upon approval of the PSC's recommendation by the JMA and JMC, as closing of the process Step 1, each Applicant will receive an official letter including the followings:

A statement informing the Applicants whether or not their application was submitted within the deadline, indicating the reference number they have been allocated, whether their application has satisfied all the administrative and eligibility criteria and whether their application has been recommended for further evaluation ( so-called quality assessment). If excluded from further evaluation, the reasons for rejection will be provided.

Next steps: The quality assessment of the project applications (Step 2) will be performed by selected external assessors. PSCs will meet for the second time to review the conclusions of the assessors and make their recommendations to the JMC expectedly in March 2010. At the end of the whole evaluation process, JMC will be convened for definitive approval of the selected proposals and of the maximum amounts awarded to the projects. This final decision making JMC meeting is planned to be organized in the middle of April 2010.