Quick guide on how to express interest in planned low or middle value negotiated procedures

Getting started

Welcome to eSubmission!

eSubmission allows economic operators to respond electronically to EU procurement procedures by preparing submissions (expressions of interest in the present case) and submitting them electronically in a structured and secure way.

The present Quick Guide applies to expression of interest for the planned low or middle value negotiated procedures only. The Quick Guides for procurement procedures can be consulted on  Funding & Tenders Portal eProcurement wiki.

As an economic operator, you can:

• Encode your expression of interest

• Submit in a secure manner

• View or resume a saved draft

• Delete a draft expression of interest

• Receive a proof of expression of interest (Submission Receipt)

• Withdraw an expression of interest before the registration deadline for expression of interest

• Receive proof of withdrawal (Withdrawal Receipt)

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

 The support team operates in English only.

How do I access eSubmission?

You will access eSubmission in the context of a planned low or middle value negotiated procedure. You will find published planned low or middle value negotiated procedures 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 express interest in the planned low or middle value negotiated procedure published on 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 expression of interest in eSubmission

Any economic operator may express their interest in a planned low and middle value negotiated procedure published on the Funding and Tenders Portal.

Once in Funding and Tenders Portal, you need to click on Express interest; 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 registration or Resume draft to resume a draft registration 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 registration you will see a progress line on top of the screen. This line shows all the steps you have to go through before registration of your expression of interest. You can also see which step you are currently in.

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 expression of interest, you will be asked to indicate:

• how you will register your expression of interest: Sole submission of expression of interest or Joint submission of expression of interest,
• in what language the expression of interest 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 expression of interest (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).

All participants 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:

• for the Main participant or Group leader:
• Contact Person (name and e-mail address)

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 expression of interest. The Contact Person receives the role Primary Coordinator Contact (PCoCo) in the Funding & Tenders Portal and the user submitting the expression of interest (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. 

Click Done when you are ready. 

Once you have passed the “Ways to submit” step, it is no longer possible to change the structure from Joint expression of interest to Sole expression of interest 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 will be deleted).

Click Next to move to the next step.

Submit your expression of interest   

When you are ready to submit your expression of interest, 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.

Your submission of expression if interest is confirmed.

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.

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 expression(s) of interest 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 registered expression of interest the PCoCo/CoCo can see the procedure reference number, the submission ID, the date of the last action performed and the submission status of registration (draft, submitted, withdrawn, deleted), the deadline, 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 organisation. 

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 an expression of interest)
• Withdrawal Receipt (proof of withdrawal of an expression of interest)

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.