The European Commission’s Annotated Grant Agreement contains a small rule that settles the date of your kick-off meeting. Travel costs for the kick-off can be eligible even if the first leg of the journey starts the day before the project begins, but only if the meeting itself is held during the action duration (European Commission, EU Grants Annotated Grant Agreement, version 3.0, 1 November 2026). Hold the kick-off one week before the official start date, and every partner’s flight becomes a cost the grant will not cover.
That rule is typical of consortium meetings. They look like ordinary project meetings, but they sit inside a legal framework: the grant agreement, the consortium agreement and the review rights of the funding body. A consortium meeting is any meeting of the partners who jointly run a funded project, from the kick-off through the general assembly to the review with the granting authority.
This guide is for the person who organises them, usually a project manager in a university research office or at the coordinating company. Picture her in month 18 of a 14-partner Horizon Europe project. The project officer and an independent expert sit across the table at the review meeting, and one of them asks: where did the consortium decide this? Our thesis is simple. A consortium meeting earns its travel budget when it ends with decisions in accepted minutes, so plan each meeting backwards from the decisions it has to take.
What counts as a consortium meeting
The project officer’s question points to the first distinction. Not every consortium meeting can decide something. Some bodies decide, some prepare, and one meeting is run by the funder, not by you.
| Meeting | Who takes part | Typical rhythm | What it must produce |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kick-off meeting | All partners, where possible with the project officer | Once, at the start of the action | Confirmed roles, internal reporting calendar, working channels |
| General assembly | One representative per partner | DESCA: at least once a year (large projects) or every six months (small projects) | Formal decisions in accepted minutes |
| Executive board or work package leaders group | Coordinator and work package leaders | DESCA: quarterly | Progress assessment, proposals to the general assembly |
| Review meeting | Coordinator, partners, granting authority, independent experts | Ad hoc or linked to periodic reports | A project review report |
| Closing meeting | All partners | Once, near the end | Final results, exploitation plans, last decisions |
Source of the rhythms: DESCA Horizon Europe model consortium agreement, version 2.1, February 2026.
The rhythms come from DESCA, a model consortium agreement for Horizon Europe that the European Commission’s IP (intellectual property) Helpdesk lists among its resources. Your own consortium agreement can set different ones, so read it before you plan the year. According to the Annotated Grant Agreement, a consortium agreement is mandatory for multi-beneficiary grants where the Data Sheet requires one, and the Commission strongly recommends one in every consortium.
Interreg projects use different words for the same structure. Under Article 26 of Regulation (EU) 2021/1059, a lead partner takes responsibility for the whole operation and lays down the arrangements with the other partners in an agreement. Many Interreg projects call their decision body a steering group or steering committee. The logic below applies to both programmes.
The meetings before the grant belong to another stage. Finding partners for a proposal is the job of a brokerage event, which we cover in our guide to EU brokerage events for partner search. This guide starts when the grant is signed.
The kick-off: start the project, not the slideshow
Once the grant is signed, most kick-offs are planned as a round of introductions: each partner presents its organisation and each work package presents its plan. That is useful, but the kick-off is the first moment when all partners sit in one room with a signed grant agreement. It should settle what nobody wants to argue about by email later.
The consortium agreement should already be signed by then. The Commission advises that each beneficiary signs it before acceding to the grant agreement, because prolonged disagreement afterwards puts the action at risk.
Put four items on the kick-off agenda as decisions, not presentations:
- Governance members: who represents each partner in the general assembly, who the work package leaders are, and who substitutes for them.
- Internal reporting calendar: when partners send internal progress reports, and how far ahead of each board meeting. DESCA has partners send one to the work package leader on request, 14 days before the meeting.
- Interfaces between work packages: which deliverable from one work package another one needs, and by which month.
- Working channels: where documents live, which tool holds the minutes, and who may edit what.
The third item is where most of the value hides. Imagine the lead of work package 3, a modelling team in Lisbon, who needs a cleaned dataset from work package 2 in month 9. If nobody says this at the kick-off, she finds out in month 8. A dozen 20-minute bilateral meetings between interdependent work packages solve more than a day of presentations. Interfaces are cheaper to discuss in month one.
General assembly: the calendar runs on notice periods
The general assembly is where those interfaces turn into decisions. Changes to the work plan or budget, the entry or exit of a partner and the handling of a partner in breach are all decisions of the general assembly in the DESCA model. They only become binding once the relevant part of the minutes has been accepted.
That makes the minutes the real output and the notice periods the real deadline. For large projects, DESCA sets this sequence:
An ordinary general assembly under the DESCA model for large projects
- 45 days before Send written notice The chairperson notifies each member of the general assembly in writing.
- 21 days before Send the agenda Every item that requires a decision is marked as such on the agenda.
- 14 days before Close added items Members may add agenda items by written notice to all other members until this point.
- Meeting day Check quorum, then vote Two thirds of members present or represented; decisions need two thirds of the votes cast.
- 10 days after Circulate draft minutes The chairperson sends the draft minutes, the formal record of all decisions, to all members.
- Receipt + 15 Minutes accepted Without a written objection within 15 calendar days of receipt, the minutes count as accepted.
Count backwards and the consequence is concrete. A general assembly on 15 June needs its written notice out by 1 May and its agenda by 25 May. Extraordinary meetings run on shorter periods, 15 days for the notice and 10 for the agenda, and the simpler DESCA module for small projects uses 14 and 7 days. Whichever applies, put the dates in the project calendar when you fix the meeting, not when you book the room.
Two details deserve a line in your own checklist. First, a partner whose legitimate interests would be severely affected can veto a decision, but only during the meeting if the item was on the original agenda. A well-drafted agenda therefore protects the decision as well as the partners. Second, DESCA also allows decisions without a meeting: the coordinator circulates a suggested decision with at least 10 calendar days for responses. That written procedure is often the better tool for a single, urgent change.
The agenda is a legal document. Treat it like one.
Hybrid general assemblies: quorum, proxies and time zones
Those notice periods do not change when the meeting moves online. DESCA allows general assembly meetings by video or other telecommunication means, and in its module for small projects the work package leaders group, which that module adds for lump sum grants, usually meets that way. The rules for decisions stay the same online, so the organisation has to carry them.
Quorum is two thirds of members present or represented, and any member may appoint a substitute or a proxy. In a hybrid room, that means a list at the start of the meeting showing who is present on site, who is online and who holds a proxy for whom. Without that list, the minutes cannot show that the quorum was reached.
Put decision items in the middle of the agenda, not at the end when online participants leave for other calls, and send voting documents with the agenda. Our guide to hybrid event planning covers the room side: microphones for every speaker, a moderator for the online participants and a technical check the day before.
The review meeting: what the project officer reads
All of this pays off at the review. The granting authority may carry out a project review at any time, often with the help of independent experts. According to the Annotated Grant Agreement, it starts with an invitation letter to the coordinator through the Funding & Tenders Portal. The letter names the appointed experts and, if there is a meeting, the documents to be discussed: normally Annex 1, the periodic reports for the period under review and the deliverables that were due.
The review examines how far the work plan has been carried out, whether the objectives are still relevant and how resources were used. During the project, it may also recommend reorientations. The results go into a project review report, and the coordinator has 30 days to submit observations. Keep the work package leaders available in that month, because the observations need their answers. Periodic reports themselves are due within 60 days after the end of each reporting period (Article 21 of the grant agreement).
Back to the project manager in month 18. The expert asks why a deliverable in work package 4 moved by three months. If the change was discussed over coffee, she has an explanation. If it was decided at the general assembly in month 11, she has the accepted minutes, the vote and the updated work plan. Only one of these answers closes the question.
Prepare a review meeting in three steps:
- List every deviation from Annex 1 in the reporting period: late deliverables, budget shifts, changed tasks.
- Match each deviation to the decision that covers it, with the date of the accepted minutes.
- Rehearse the presentation with the work package leaders, who will answer the expert’s detailed questions.
Deviations without a decision are the ones that hurt. Find them before the expert does.
Let partners meet each other, not just the agenda
Decisions are half of what a consortium meeting is for. The other half is the working relationships that make the next six months easier. In a 14-partner project, the plenary is where everybody listens to everybody. The useful conversations happen in pairs: the work package leader who needs data, the partner who will exploit the results, the early-career researcher who wants a second opinion on her method.
Plan those conversations instead of hoping for them. Collect the information at registration: partner, work package, role and one open question for the meeting. Then reserve two or three slots of 20 minutes for bilateral meetings between the people whose tasks depend on each other. The meetings and follow-ups that come out of it are also material for your funder. Our guide to reporting to funders explains which of those numbers hold up in a report.
Solution: With Converve, you add fields such as partner, work package and role to the registration form and plan plenary and parallel work package sessions in programme planning. In a rule-based meeting matrix you decide which participant groups may request meetings with each other. Bilateral slots are only booked once both sides accept, and the B2B matchmaking schedules them without clashes, with a time and a table.
Budget and logistics: what the grant pays for
The last practical question is money, and the Annotated Grant Agreement answers more of it than most organisers expect. In actual-cost grants, travel to the kick-off and closing meetings can be eligible even if part of the journey falls outside the project duration, as long as the meeting itself falls inside it. A contract for the rooms and catering of a meeting counts as a purchase, not as subcontracting, unless organising the meeting is itself a task in Annex 1. Interpreters appear in its list of other goods, works and services.
Many consortia rotate the hosting partner, who pays rooms and catering while everyone pays their own travel. Agree on that rotation at the kick-off. Under lump sum grants, the logic changes: costs are not reported, but the completion of work packages is, which makes the work package assessment at the general assembly even more important.
Conclusion: plan the minutes first
A consortium meeting in an EU-funded project is a decision-making event inside a legal framework. The kick-off settles roles, interfaces and the reporting calendar. The general assembly turns changes into decisions, and the minutes make them binding. The review meeting checks whether the two match. Plan each meeting backwards from the decisions it must take and the notice periods in your consortium agreement. Use the remaining time for the bilateral conversations that keep partners working together.
When the project officer asks where the consortium decided something, the answer should be a date and a set of accepted minutes.
If you organise consortium meetings or stakeholder days for an EU project and want to see how registration, programme and partner meetings can run on one platform, get in touch with Converve.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a consortium meeting?
A consortium meeting is a meeting of the partners who jointly carry out a funded project, such as a Horizon Europe or Interreg project. The main types are the kick-off, the general assembly as the decision-making body, the executive board, the review meeting with the granting authority and the closing meeting.
How often does the general assembly of a Horizon Europe project meet?
That depends on the consortium agreement. In the DESCA model consortium agreement (version 2.1, February 2026), the general assembly of a large project meets at least once a year and the executive board at least quarterly. In the simpler module for small and medium-sized projects, the general assembly meets at least every six months.
How much notice is required for a general assembly?
Under the DESCA module for large projects, written notice is due at least 45 calendar days before an ordinary general assembly and 15 days before an extraordinary one. The agenda follows 21 days before an ordinary meeting, or 10 days before an extraordinary one. Your own consortium agreement may set other periods.
When should the kick-off meeting take place?
On or after the project start date. According to the European Commission’s Annotated Grant Agreement (version 3.0, November 2026), travel costs for the kick-off can be eligible even if the journey starts the day before, but only if the meeting itself is held during the action duration.
What happens at a review meeting in Horizon Europe?
The granting authority, often with independent experts, examines progress against Annex 1 of the grant agreement, usually based on the periodic reports and the deliverables that were due. The results go into a project review report, and the coordinator has 30 days to submit observations.