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Effects on Research Organisations,
Research Policies & Funding Structures
As a new pan-European competitive funding structure, the ERC has significantly contributed to the establish-
•
ment of new benchmarks of excellence and competitiveness among European research and innovation stake-
holders that should lead to crucial structural changes in the European Research Area. Indeed, it has catalysed
changes in strategies, policies, research fundingmechanisms and practices of national research systems and
individual institutions that should create amore attractive and competitiveEuropean research environment and
should ultimately lead to the convergence of quality standards across the ERA. Several countries have intro-
duced reforms to their national systems based on the ERC model. In addition, national and regional authori-
ties are analysing their performance on the ERC calls and improving their policies and practices accordingly.
Greece has introduced two funding schemes named “ΑΡΙΣΤΕΙΑ” (“Excellence”:
&
)
&
(“Support to Postdoctoral research-
ers”) inspired in the funding strategy and the proposal structure of the ERC Grant schemes.
The ERC has also stimulated research organisations to invest more in the support of excellent research-
•
ers and in particular in promising new talents as the next generation of research leaders in Europe. In this
sense, European universities and research institutions have begun to use their success in ERC calls as a
stamp of prestige and excellence and to actively compete for top researchers by offering the most attractive
“working” conditions. This is the case at organisations such as Ghent University, Tuebingen Medical Hospi-
tal and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, which offers incentives for ERC Grant holders.
In Greece, while there are some organisations that have difficulty with the independence of Starting grant-
ees due to institutional laws, the strategy of the Biomedical Research Foundation at the Academy of Athens
should be considered a best practice in supporting promising top talents. In this case, both Starting grant-
ees hosted by the Greek organisation have been offered upgraded positions.
The
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carried out by top-level international peer reviewers has achieved a
high and widespread reputation and constitutes a gold standard for numerous national systems. In this
context, several countries have established national initiatives that are complementary to the ERC schemes
in that they fund the runners-up in the ERC calls.
Since 2011, Greece has launched a national scheme that funds ERC applicants that applied with a Greek
HI, went to second-stage evaluation, reached the quality threshold but were not funded due to budget
limitation. The novel initiative uses Structural Funds and has so far been applied to both funding schemes
(Advanced and Starting grants) of the
&
calls. The name of the beneficiaries (HIs) that
applied to the ERC-2010 Advanced & Starting Grant competitions and have been funded by the national
scheme are listed at the
.
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IMPACT AND MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS of the ERC in the ERA & in Greece