1. A proposal shall be evaluated on the basis of the following award criteria:
(a)
excellence;
(b)
impact;
(c)
quality and efficiency of the implementation.
2. Only the criterion referred to in point (a) of paragraph 1 shall apply to proposals for ERC frontier research actions.
3. The work programme shall lay down further details concerning the application of the award criteria laid down in paragraph 1 including any weighting, thresholds and where relevant rules for dealing with ex aequo proposals, taking into consideration the objectives of the call for proposals. The conditions for dealing with ex aequo proposals may include, but shall not be limited to, the following criteria: SMEs, gender, and geographical diversity.
4. The Commission and other funding bodies shall take into account the possibility of a two-stage submission and evaluation procedure and where appropriate, anonymised proposals may be evaluated during the first stage of evaluation based on one or more of the award criteria referred to in paragraph 1.