As a general rule, 30 days following reception of the signed agreement/10 days before starting date (whichever is the latest) ECHO will pay a first pre-financing equivalent to the 80% of the total amount of its contribution.


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.

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 used.

However, if the statement on the use of the previous prefinancing payment shows that less than 70% was used, the amount will be reduced by the difference between the 70% threshold and the amount used.

Prefinancing payments (or parts of them) may be offset (without the beneficiaries’ consent) against amounts owed by a beneficiary to the granting authority up to the amount due to that beneficiary.

For grants where the granting authority is the European Commission or an EU executive agency, offsetting may also be done against amounts owed to other Commission services or executive agencies.

• Enter into APPEL
• Go to the Search project page and refine your search and click on the project concerned
• Click on 'Pre-financing Request' and upload the filled in template and submit to ECHO. This template is available below and in the reference documents page.