@neil I'm guessing this is an attempt at integrating it within the EU's weird funding structures where everything must be a public tender to be funded, and therefore creating a project is bureaucratically easier than trying to essentially take over an existing one.
I think this is also part of the reason that eg. FOSS funding was outsourced through organizations like NLNet?
@neil Though I should note that I'm not certain that there don't *exist* other funding methods for the EU, I have just heard claims from quite a few people dealing with EU stuff that this is the easiest way to get it through bureaucracy, so it's possible that it's more convenience than regulatory requirement
@neil (And yes this is a fucking awful model for funding the commons, but you can thank the neoliberals for that)