Quick guide for two-step procurement procedures - Step 1

(restricted procedures, competitive procedures with negotiation , competitive dialogues, innovation partnerships and design contests)

Getting started


Welcome to eSubmission!

eSubmission allows economic operators to respond electronically to EU procurement procedures by preparing submissions (i.e. request to participate) and submitting them electronically in a structured and secure way.

The present Quick Guide applies to first step of the two-step procedures only. In this step, the economic operators can submit the request to participate. The Quick Guides for the second step of the two-step procedures as well as the guides for the other procurement procedures can be consulted on Funding & Tenders Portal eProcurement wiki .

As an economic operator, you can:

  • Encode your response to a procedure launched by an EU institution, body or agency

  • Submit in a secure manner

  • View or resume a saved draft

  • Delete a draft submission

  • Receive proof of submission (Submission Receipt)

  • Withdraw a submission before the time limit for requests to participate

  • Receive proof of withdrawal (Withdrawal Receipt)

Make sure you read the System Requirements.

You can find them on the front page of the eSubmission application and in the attachments section on the Parties page.

How do I get technical help?

If you need help, you can contact our support team, from 08:00 until 20:00 CET/CEST (Brussels time) .

  ec-funding-tender-service-desk@ec.europa.eu

 +32 (0) 229 71063

(info) The support team operates in English only.

How do I access eSubmission?

You will always access eSubmission in the context of a procurement procedure (call for tenders). You will find published calls for tenders of European institutions, bodies and agencies on Funding & Tenders Portal.

What do I need to use eSubmission?

You need to be registered in the European Commission’s user authentication service (EU Login) to use eSubmission and to respond to a call for tenders published on the Funding & Tenders Portal. 

To identify your organisation in the electronic submission, it must be registered in the Commission’s organisations register (Participant Register) and have a PIC (Participant Identification Code). More information on PIC can be found here. Registration is open to all organisations and free of charge.

EU Login

EU Login is the entry gate to sign in to different European Commission services and/or systems. If you do not have an EU Login yet, you can create an account.

For more information, see the EU Login help.

Funding & Tenders Portal

The Funding & Tenders Portal is the single entry point (Single Electronic Data Interchange Area) for participants and experts in funding programs and tenders managed by the European Commission and other EU institutions, bodies and agencies.

From the Funding & Tenders Portal participants can:

  • Search opportunities in EU funding programs or procurement procedures

  • Subscribe to calls for tenders
  • Consult procurement documents
  • Create and submit a question 

  • Register in the Participant Register 

  • Access eSubmission

  • Access the Submission Receipts (proof of submission)

  • View, edit or delete draft submissions

  • Withdraw submissions and access the Withdrawal Receipt (proof of withdrawal)

  • Manage roles

Participant Register

The Commission has set up an online register of organisations participating in EU calls for tenders or proposals in order to apply the "once only" principle: data related to a participant's organisation needs to be submitted only once. Following the registration each organisation obtains a unique Participant Identification Code (PIC). To learn how to obtain a PIC in the Participant Register, please refer to this page.


How to prepare your request to participate in eSubmission

Any economic operator may submit a request to participate by using the Funding and Tenders Portal link indicated in the contract notice / design contest notice.

      

Once in Funding and Tenders Portal, you need to click on Access submission: this will redirect you to eSubmission portal, provided that you are logged in with your EU Login account.

  

First, you need to read and accept the Terms and Conditions and acknowledge that you have read and understood the Data Protection Notice.

In eSubmission click on New submission to start a new submission or Resume draft to resume a draft submission started earlier. You can also resume your draft from the Funding & Tenders Portal (for more information, see the section Manage submissions in Funding & Tenders Portal in this guide ).

Navigating in eSubmission 

When you start your submission you will see a progress line on top of the screen. This line shows all the steps you have to go through before submitting your request to participate. You can also see which step you are currently in.

At any time during the submission process you can see which documents have been uploaded by clicking on the Submission documents button on the left side of the screen.


(warning) Nothing is submitted to the contracting authority until you have clicked the Submit button at the end of the submission process.

Ways to submit

When you start a new submission, you will be asked to indicate:

  • how you will submit your request to participate: Sole submission or Joint submission,
  • if the submission will involve subcontracting,
  • in what language the submission will be made.

After you have made your choice, click on the button Next at the bottom of the page.

Parties

In this section you must identify the organisations participating in your submission (participants). Click on New party and select the type of participant: main participant (in case of sole submission), group leader or group member (in case of joint submission) and subcontractor (if applicable).

All participants, except subcontractors, must be identified with a PIC – Participant Identification Code. To check if an entity already has a PIC (i.e. is already registered in the Participant Register), use the  Search button. You can search by PIC, VAT number, National Registration number and country. To be able to search by VAT number or National Registration number you need to also select the country.

If the search shows no results, the organisation must register to obtain a PIC.  After obtaining the PIC, go back to  eSubmission , search by the PIC and select the displayed organisation.

The data associated with the PIC in the Participant Register will appear on the screen and you will be asked to provide the following mandatory data/documents:

  • for the Main participant or Group leader:
    • Contact Person (name and e-mail address)
    • IBAN/Bank account number
  • for all participants: Declaration on Honour (duly completed and signed) in the Attachments section.


 In the Contact Person section, the user can indicate himself/herself (the name is already prefilled) or another person as the contact person for the request to participate. The Contact Person receives the role Primary Coordinator Contact (PCoCo) in the Funding & Tenders Portal and the user submitting the request to participate (if different from the Contact Person) - the role Coordinator Contact (CoCo). 

 If the PCoCo does not have an EU Login account, a temporary EU Login account will be automatically created based on the Contact Person email address and the person will be invited by email to complete the EU Login registration. The invitation will be an automatic system message with no reference to the procedure. 

In the Attachments section of each participant you can upload the participant’s documents relating to exclusion and selection criteria. Check the tender specifications to identify which documents for which participant must be included in the submission.

Click Done when you are ready. 

(warning) Once you have passed the “Ways to submit” step, it is no longer possible to change the structure from Joint submission to Sole submission or vice versa. In case you want to modify the structure of your submission or change the Group leader, you need to create a new submission overwriting your draft submission (all previously entered data and uploaded documents will be deleted).

Click Next to move to the next step.


Lots

  

In a procedure with several lots, choose the lot(s) for which you would like to submit a request to participate and then click on the button Next.

(warning) The identification of participants applies to the submission as a whole. Therefore, if the composition of the consortium is different per lot, you will need to make a separate submission per lot.


Submission report

  

The submission report is generated by the system and is part of the submission. The report lists all the documents included in the submission.

eSubmission automatically generates and adds the submission report to your submission. You can consult the report on the screen or download it for your own records (before submitting the request to participate). You don’t need to sign and upload the signed report in eSubmission.

After viewing the submission report, if you consider the submission complete and ready for submission, click on Next to continue.

(warning) The submission report is not a proof of submission. You have  not submitted yet . Please proceed to the next step and  click on Submit to finalise the submission.


Submit your request to participate   

  

When you are ready to submit your request to participate, click on Submit . The system will display a confirmation message.

Click Yes if you want to confirm: you will no longer be able to modify this submission.

Please note that the system will not allow you to submit if the time limit for receipt of request to participate has been reached.

An e-mail notification will be sent to the e-mail address of the PCoCo/CoCo. This e-mail notification contains a link to the Funding & Tenders Portal where the  PCoCo/CoCo  can find the Submission Receipt. Note that the owners of the PIC used in the submission will be informed.

(warning) The Submission Receipt constitutes proof of compliance with the time limit for receipt of submissions.


Manage roles in Funding & Tenders Portal


The Contact Person indicated in eSubmission receives the role Primary Coordinator Contact (PCoCo) for the submission of the request to participate and the invitation for step 2 in the Funding & Tenders Portal. The user submitting the request (if different from the Contact Person in the request) receives the role Coordinator Contact (CoCo) for the submission of the request and the invitation  for step 2, unless the role has been removed by the PCoCo/another CoCo of the submission of the request in the period between the opening of the requests by the contracting authority and the receipt of the invitation for step 2.

Additional Coordinator Contact(s) (CoCo) on the submission of the request can be added or removed via the Manage Roles button (see below).

Please note that there can be only one PCoCo per invitation or submission. The PCoCo for the submission of the request (step 1) cannot be replaced nor removed through the F&T Portal (contact the F&T helpdesk if the PCoCo for the submission has to be replaced).

The PCoCo for an invitation for step 2 can be now replaced in the F&T Portal directly by the LEAR and the Account Administrator (there is no longer need to contact the F&T support team),once the invitation for step 2 has been launched.

To add/remove roles on a submission follow the steps below:

1

Under the Action dropdown on the right of the submission of the request to participate, click on the Manage Roles option. This option will appear only after the contracting authority has opened the submitted requests to participate.

2

Click on Edit Roles button.

  

3

To add an additional  CoCo  for the submission, click on   Add Roles    button .  

  

4

Add the details of the person to be added as an additional CoCo  and click on the Save button.

5

To delete a CoCo, click on the delete icon next to their name. 

  

  (info)  CoCo’s added as described above after the contracting authority has sent the invitations for step 2 will not be able to submit a tender. Only PCoCo/CoCos who have received the invitation for step 2 or CoCos who have been added through the “Manage roles” action button on the invitation will be able to submit a tender (see the Quick Guide for the second step of the two-step procedures).


Manage submissions in Funding & Tenders Portal


To enter your private area of the Funding & Tenders Portal you need to authenticate yourself by using the Sign in   button of the Funding & Tenders Portal at the top right end of the home page (enter your EU Login and password).

View submissions

Under the section Manage my area on the left the  PCoCo/CoCo  will find the requests(s) to participate under My Submission(s) section.
A search field is also available on the right above the list of submissions.

My Submission(s) section

For each submission the PCoCo/CoCo can see the procedure reference number, the submission ID, the date of the last action performed and the submission status (draft, submitted, withdrawn, deleted), the deadline, the lot (if applicable), the procedure title, the procedure type and the step.

The Action menu on the right of each submission (unless the submission has been deleted) allows the PCoCo/CoCo to perform different actions depending on the submission status.

For submissions in Draft status:  

  

  • Edit: eSubmission opens the screen you were in when you left the application. You can now edit your submission in eSubmission.
  • View: eSubmission opens the screen you were in when you left the application. It is not possible to edit the submission as you are viewing it in read-only mode. 
  • Delete: the draft submission will be deleted from the Funding & Tenders Portal.

For submissions in Submitted status:

  

  • View Receipt: the submission receipt is displayed.
  • Withdraw (available only before the deadline for submission): provide the reason to withdraw the submission and confirm by clicking on the Withdraw button. Once you have withdrawn a submission, you cannot view, edit or submit it again.

For submissions in Withdrawn status:

  

  • View Withdrawal Receipt: the withdrawal receipt is displayed.


For submissions in Deleted status:

The Action menu is not available for the submission with status Deleted. Once a draft submission has been deleted, it cannot be retrieved by the participant. 



Manage notifications in Funding & Tenders Portal 

My notifications

The PCoCo/CoCo can access this page by clicking on the bell icon at the top right of the screen after having logged in to the Funding & Tenders Portal.

On this page the PCoCo/CoCo can find the following notifications:

  • Submission Receipt (proof of submission of a request to participate)
  • Withdrawal Receipt (proof of withdrawal of a request to participate)

In the Preferences tab under Manage all notifications (at the bottom of the notifications list) PCoCo/CoCo  can choose the frequency of Funding & Tenders Portal email notifications. Independently of your choice all your notifications are always available in the section My notifications .

My Formal Notification(s) 

This section, available under Manage my area on the left is currently not used for procurement procedures.


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