Selection procedure
Article 23
1. Member States shall verify that the applications have been lodged within the deadline, examine each application and assess it as regards its compliance with the rules on the content of the application and with the eligibility criteria and eligible costs established for each measure provided for in their support programme. If applications do not comply with these requirements or with the eligibility criteria and the eligible costs, they shall be excluded as ineligible. 2. Where priority criteria apply to a measure, Member States shall examine all the applications considered as eligible under that measure after the assessment provided for in paragraph 1 and give a score to each of them. The score shall be calculated on the basis of the priority criteria fulfilled by the application and the specific weighting attributed to every priority criterion established for each measure. Member States shall establish a ranking of the eligible applications on the basis of the scores they have obtained. 3. Where the total value of the eligible applications of a support measure exceeds the budget allocated to that measure in a given financial year, Member States shall select the applications in descending order of the ranking established in accordance with paragraph 2 until the exhaustion of the available budget. Alternatively, Member States may fix a minimum score as a threshold and select all applications that reach that minimum score. In this case, where the total value of the eligible applications that reach the threshold exceeds the available budget for a support measure, Member States may apply pro-rata payments to those applications. 4. Member States may fix a threshold and decide to exclude eligible applications that do not reach that threshold even if the value of the eligible applications does not exceed the available budget. 5. For each relevant measure, Member States may submit again to the selection procedure eligible applications that have been excluded in the previous year in accordance with paragraphs 3 and 4 upon the agreement of the applicant. 6. Where applications have been excluded pursuant to this Article, applicants shall be informed of the reasons thereof.