Assessment of Scholarships for the Turkish Cypriot Community Programme (Academic year 2012-13)

Detailed description of project Back

Responding to an invitation from the Council, the Commission proposed a comprehensive package of aid and trade and as a consequence, on 27 February 2006 the Council adopted Regulation (EC) 389/2006, establishing an instrument of financial support for encouraging the economic development of the Turkish Cypriot community. This regulation includes inter alia provisions for improving contacts between the two communities and bringing the Turkish Cypriots closer to the EU through grant schemes of which the Community Scholarship Programmes is one of the most successful. Under this scheme scholarships are awarded to Turkish Cypriot undergraduate students, graduates and teachers in order to offer them additional educational opportunities, raising their knowledge in a specific field, as well as the experience of studying and living in another EU Member State for a better understanding of the EU.

Under the 2006 Aid Programme almost 300 grants were awarded; additional funds of EUR 1.5 million in 2009 as well as 2011 led to the award of 96 and 91 scholarship grants respectively. During the beginning of July 2012, the Commission has adopted a new Decision allocating funds of EUR 0,8 million for the scholarships programme for the academic year 2012/13 and a new Call for Expressions of Interest was published.

The overall task of the expert team under this contract is to facilitate the work of the Evaluation Committee in the evaluation of the grant applications to be submitted under the Call for Expressions of Interest of the “Scholarships for the Turkish Cypriot community Programme for the academic year 2012/13.”

Type of services provided

The B&S Consortium provides the services of An assessment team. PROMAN contracts the Team Leader and 3 out of the 5 assessors and provides backstopping and quality control.

The assessment of the grant applications was carried out in one stage at the premises of the EU Programme Support Office (EUPSO) in Nicosia, i.e. the applicant’s documents; written and oral performance was assessed on the same day. The applicants submitted their Application package with the required documents upon arrival for the interview. While the assessors checked the compliance with formal/administrative requirements and the eligibility criteria the applicants were writing the motivation letter in the EUPSO. Thereafter the applicants were assessed on the basis of the motivation letter and their performance during the interview.