Use of B2 for lecturer?

I would like to ask whether you have experience with the use of category
B2 - management and indirect costs. We have been informed at the
coordinators' briefing that one can always transfer any surplus from the
B to the A category but never the other way round. There is also a list
of potential use for B2, such as

Costs associated with the preparation of the reports and other documents
required by the REA:  Researcher declarations, deliverables, ethics,
progress report, periodic and final reports etc  Personnel costs of the
Project Manager  Maintenance of the Consortium Agreement  The overall
legal, ethical, financial and administrative management for each of the
beneficiaries  Indirect costs of the action

We now have a case where a beneficiary thinks of giving parts of the
money - their fair share of the B2 category, according to our Consortium
Agreement - to one of the postdocs in their lab, as this guy will also
partially supervise the recruited ESR. I am, however, not entirely sure
this is legitimate. I understand that unit costs are unit costs, but I
am wondering whether this will fall under 'indirect costs of the action'
- I do suppose so. And I also think a bit further: The coordinator
himself could put a similar case if he would like to use parts of the B2
to hire a lecturer to take over some part of the teaching which he might
not be able to do so due to the time used for the project coordination.

Would you know that or simply ask it to the PO?

Hello Julie,

As you say: "unit costs" are "unit costs" and as soon as the ESRs are fully paid based on European Commission requirements, the institutional costs can be used without justifying the nature of the costs. Therefore, the PI could pay a postdoc. However, I do not think that it is the spirit of ITN projects to use the institutional costs this way. The objectives of the institutional costs are not to pay personnel costs: none of the supervisors in ITN projects is paid. Moreover, if the PI does so, he/she must be sure that the ESR has all resources needed to perform correctly the job. In case of an audit and if the ESR complains about not having enough resources for the research, it may be a big problem.

A+

Hello guys,
In our project the coordinator informed the consortium (prioir to any signatures) that she will need to buy out some of her teaching time from this B2 category in order to free it for the coordinating activities of the project.
Maybe in case of Julie it can work the similar way, except the buying-out costs will be further redirected to the postdoc.
We have not carried out this procedure yet because it looks like with covid things changed slightly for the coordinator, so I cannot help with any more technical details of such "deal"

Thank you both of you for your answers!
I think I'll also ask the PO what her opinion is, but in most cases, as said, they just answer 'unit costs are unit costs' which is correct from their point of view, alas...