The Emergence of the ERC

Abstract

As someone who has been awarded funding in multiple projects in both sides of the Atlantic, I see the emergence of an European Research Council (ERC) (“Decisive day for European research,” W. Krull, H. Nowotny, Editorial, 5 Nov. 2004, p. 941) as an opportunity to improve on existing models. I would like to offer my two cents. First, it may not be that important that an ERC is well funded to the point that it could replace national granting agencies—recent reports suggest that this is most likely too tall an order. I see it as more critical that it should be funded and configured to provide unbiased supranational evaluation of research proposals. The rankings could then be used for awarding EU funding or could instead, or jointly, be carried by national agencies with a mandate to fund the best proposals in a given area. Second, U.S. granting agencies appear to be shifting from a paradigm that mostly targeted individual-initiated research to one that more likely rewards collective initiatives. In my experience, this actually better promotes young researchers and provides more protection to fundamental work under the umbrella of longer-term goals. This is particularly clear in the NIH roadmap. There may be a precious lesson here the ERC may want to consider: Micromanaging the progress of 3-year research programs falls significantly short of objectively evaluating the achievements of 5- or even 7-year larger initiatives. # Response {#article-title-2} I am glad to see that the establishment of an ERC elicits comparisions and advice as offered by Almeida. It was never intended that an ERC would replace national granting agencies. Apart from being legally impossible, this would have meant political suicide and is indeed too tall an order to finance from the EU budget. But the proposal to use the unbiased supranational evaluation of research proposals, in case they are not funded, as a recommendation especially for national funding is an interesting one. The paradigm shift observed among U.S. granting agencies from targeting individual research to collective initiatives has long been preceded by EU funding practice, however. This has been the standard rule in all Framework Programmes since the beginning. In setting up only two criteria—attracting the best of the best in terms of scientific excellence, and a rigorous competition by supranational peer review—funding for basic research at EU level through an ERC should be open to individuals as well as to research groups across the European Research Area without any further strings attached. This is the truly innovative feature of an ERC—if and when it comes about.