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The ERC will have a determinant role in Horizon 2020 and particularly under the ‘Excellence in the science base’
element of the programme where the funding approaches are science-driven and largely bottom-up and inves-
tigator-initiated. The proposed budget for the ERC under Horizon 2020 from 2014 to 2020 is
€
13,2 billion which
represents a significant increase in funding of 77%. Indeed, the ERC has been recognized as the success story
of the 7
th
Framework Programme. In a remarkably short time the ERC has gained widespread recognition as a
world-class research funding agency, it has succeeded in attracting & funding world-class research, and it has
strengthened the ERA by providing a more attractive status and image for frontier research and by empowering
the best brains in Europe while also attracting talent from abroad.
The ERC has also gained a central place in Europe 2020 and in the Innovation Union Strategy for promoting
Europe’s economic recovery, global competitiveness and social prosperity. Indeed the ERC strategy promotes
competitive funding of excellent, curiosity-driven ideas as a key instrument to advance in all fields of science,
engineering and particularly in new and rapidly emerging areas which are closely associated with world-leading
innovation, and support these novel ideas in the first step towards the market place.
The ERC fully supports the EC in its objective to create “an ERA in which researchers, scientific knowledge and
technology circulate freely” by 2014 and agrees that there is an urgent need to improve career prospects for
researchers, to develop and maintain pan-European research infrastructures and the desirability of more open
access, but presently stresses the need for an ERA that should reach a balance between funding based on co-
ordination and merit-based competition in a curiosity-driven bottom-up mode
.
In the frame of Horizon 2020, the ERC will continue to support and recommend policies to foster the empow-
erment of researchers, especially the younger ones that represent the next generation of research leaders in
Europe, but will also focus on increasing the involvement of industry in ERC funding schemes and attracting and
repatriating more top talents from non-ERA countries. In this sense, the Scientific Council’s Working Group on
the ‘ERC Internationalisation Strategy’ has proposed the further simplification of the ERC Work Programme, with
a specific focus on applicants from outside the ERA, by giving emphasis on the possibility for non-ERA grantees
to obtain additional financial resources to cover ‘start-up’ costs (already included in the Work Programme), for
flexibility in implementing the requirement that 50% of working time must be spent on an ERC project, as well as
the possibility to involve additional team members from outside the ERA as an opportunity to recruit researchers
from the best research institutions worldwide. In this context,
(27)
was launched in July 2012 to
help young top talent, based in the U.S. and pre-selected by the National Science Foundation (NSF), to spend
some time in Europe, hosted as members of ERC grantees’ teams.
In the timeframe of Horizon 2020, some structural, governance and implementation changes have been recom-
mended to the ERC such as an improved Executive Agency structure, with a stronger role for the agency direc-
tor, a quasi-full-time Brussels-based ERC President, and the abolition of the post of ERC Secretary General
)
.
In the longer term, but certainly not before the mid-term of the Horizon 2020 programme, it may be necessary
to reconsider the possibilities offered by Art 182(5) of the Treaty. Other recommendations call for simplification,
greater flexibility and more harmonized procedures for applying for, and managing, ERC Grants in order to make
ERC funding more attractive and easy to access for excellent researchers all over the world. It has also been indi-
cated that the funding should be more in accordance with the nature of frontier research on a highly flexible basis
as grants in aid rather than as implied contracts. Certainly, in high-risk research the Principal Investigator must
be able to change course and adjust the scientific approach according to what is learnt during the project.
70
the
case of
GREECE
5
years of
Excellence in
the European
Research Area
2007-2011