Mission

What is the ERC?

The European Research Council (ERC) is the first European funding body set up to support investigator-driven frontier research.

Its main aim is to stimulate scientific excellence by supporting and encouraging the very best, truly creative scientists, scholars and engineers to be adventurous and take risks in their research. The scientists are encouraged to go beyond established frontiers of knowledge and the boundaries of disciplines.

The ERC complements other funding activities in Europe such as those of the national research funding agencies, and is a flagship component of the 'Ideas Programme' of the European Union's Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7).

Being 'investigator-driven', or 'bottom-up', in nature, the ERC approach allows researchers to identify new opportunities and directions in any field of research, rather than being led by priorities set by politicians. This approach ensures that funds are channelled into new and promising areas of research with a greater degree of flexibility.

ERC grants are awarded through open competition to projects headed by starting and established researchers, irrespective of their origins, who are working or moving to work in Europe - the sole criterion for selection is scientific excellence. The aim here is to recognise the best ideas, and retain and confer status and visibility to the best brains in Europe, while also attracting talent from abroad.

However the ERC aims to do more than simply fund research.
In the long term, it looks to substantially strengthen and shape the European research system. This is done through high quality peer review, the establishment of international benchmarks of success, and the provision of up-to-date information on who is succeeding and why.

The hope is that these processes will help universities and other research institutions gauge their performance and encourage them to develop better strategies to establish themselves as more effective global players.

By challenging Europe's brightest minds, the ERC expects that its grants will help to bring about new and unpredictable scientific and technological discoveries - the kind that can form the basis of new industries, markets, and broader social innovations of the future.

Ultimately, the ERC aims to make the European research base more prepared to respond to the needs of a knowledge-based society and provide Europe with the capabilities in frontier research necessary to meet global challenges.

ERC in a nutshell

The ERC aims to:

  • support the best of the best scientific efforts in Europe across all fields of science, scholarship and engineering.
  • promote wholly investigator-driven, or 'bottom-up' frontier research.
  • encourage the work of the established and next generation of independent top research leaders in Europe.
  • reward innovative proposals by placing emphasis on the quality of the idea rather than the research area.
  • harness the diversity of European research talent and channel funds into the most promising or distinguished researchers.
  • raise the status and visibility of European frontier research and the very best researchers of today and tomorrow.
  • put excellence at the heart of European Research

What is 'frontier research' and what are its benefits?

Today the distinction between 'basic' and 'applied' research has become blurred, due to the fact that emerging areas of science and technology often cover substantial elements of both. As a result, the term 'frontier research' was coined for ERC activities since they will be directed towards fundamental advances at and beyond the 'frontier' of knowledge.

The ERC aims to bring about a wide range of benefits:

  • By creating open and direct competition for funding between the very best researchers in Europe, the ERC will enhance aspirations and achievements. It will enable the best ideas and talents to be recognised from a larger pool than exists at national level.
  • The ERC's competitive funding will be able to channel funds into the most promising new fields, with a degree of agility not always possible in national funding schemes.
  • The ERC aims to stimulate research organisations to invest more in the support of promising new talents - the next generation of research leaders in Europe.
  • On the economic side, the ERC will help nurture science-based industry and create a greater impetus for the establishment of research-based spin-offs.
  • From a societal perspective, the ERC could provide a mechanism for investing rapidly in research targeted at new and emerging issues confronting society.