Researchers across Europe are to soon enjoy first funding opportunities through the European Research Council (ERC), which will start activity in 2007 as part of the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (7FP) (for background information on the ERC, see ACA Newsletter – Education Europe, July 2005). The news came from the recently published Work Programme 2007 of the ERC. The Programme pursues the ERC’s fundamental principle of “stimulating investigator-initiated frontier research across all fields of research, on the basis of excellence.” The aim is to develop an international grant scheme to support European science and scholarship.

The ERC announces two types of grants:

• Starting Independent Research Grants (ERC Starting Grants) – intended for excellent researchers of any nationality, located in or moving to the EU and associated countries, who are establishing or leading their first research team or programme;
• Advanced Investigator Grants (ERC Advanced Grants) – to complement the Starting Grant scheme and support already established researchers across the EU member states and countries associated to the Framework Programme.

The first call for proposals will be for ERC Starting Grants and its deadline is still to be announced. Its budget is targeted at about 300 million euro. The Advanced Grant budget will be announced in 2007. The overall ERC funding is expected to increase substantially over the period 2007-2013.

More about the objectives, conditions, size and procedures of the ERC financing is found in the ERC Work Programme. European Research Council Work Programme 2007