20. The Work Programme states that the twinning activities “will provide no support for hiring new permanent research staff”. What does this mean? Are personnel costs (i.e. salaries) eligible in a Twinning project?

Twinning is not aimed at hiring new researchers (permanent or temporary), as its objectives, amongst others, focus on raising the existing staff’s research profile.
However, personnel costs ( i.e. salaries) are eligible as follows:

for personnel of all beneficiaries (from Widening or non-Widening countries),
regardless of their function (researchers, administration, management),
regardless of their status at the organizations (permanent or temporary or newly recruited)
provided that these personnel costs are directly attributed to the eligible activities (non-research) indicated in the Work Programme text and
subject to the cost eligibility conditions in Article 6 of the Model Grant Agreement.