Being a Pillar-Assessed Organisation means the European Commission has audited your internal systems and procedures and recognised them as compliant with international standards and equivalent to its own. This allows it to entrust your organisation with budget implementation tasks under indirect management, and lets you apply your own rules for internal control systems, procurement and grant award to third parties.

That is the part most people know. The part that takes more work: your rules apply, but the EU’s still matter. Contribution Agreements come with their own requirements on eligible costs, reporting, visibility and verification, and knowing exactly where one rulebook ends and the other begins is what keeps a project compliant.