As per article 109 of FR and 165 of IR, the non-profit rule simply states that the EC contribution must be used only to cover costs incurred to achieve project's objectives, and no profit must be made out of it. Hence, to be reimbursed expenses must be documented (except for the 7% of indirect costs): to be eligible costs must be verifiable and comply with other specific principles of sound financial management. The treatment of interests serves this purpose indeed. It is not exact saying that the interests yielded on pre-financing must be returned to the Commission: this is the case for pre-financing of more than 750,000 €. For pre-financing of more than 250,000 interests yielded are usually assigned to the Action and deducted from the final balance, unless otherwise requested by the Contracting Authority (please see art. 15.9 - 15.13 of the General Conditions).

Date: 07/12/2009