The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe.
The ERC offers 4 core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to explore the innovation potential of their ideas or research results.
The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. Since 1 November 2021, Maria Leptin is the President of the ERC.
The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe programme, under the responsibility of the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Iliana Ivanova.
Our mission
The ERC's mission is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields, based on scientific excellence.
Structure and Governance
The ERC is composed of an independent Scientific Council, its governing body consisting of distinguished researchers, and an Executive Agency, in charge of implementation.
Scientific Council
The Scientific Council governs the ERC, and is responsible for setting the ERC's scientific strategy.
It consists of 22 eminent scientists and scholars. On behalf of the scientific community in Europe, the Scientific Council acts to promote creativity and innovative research.
The European Commission appoints the members, on the recommendations of an independent Identification Committee. The term of office of the members of the Scientific Council is four years, renewable once.
The Chair of the Scientific Council is the President of the ERC and the formal representative of the ERC to the European Commission and other bodies.
Maria Leptin took office as the President of the ERC from 1 November 2021.
The ERC Vice-Presidents are Gerd Gigerenzer (Social Sciences and Humanities), Eystein Jansen (Physical sciences and Engineering) and Jesper Svejstrup (Life Sciences).
ERC Executive Agency
The ERC Executive Agency (ERCEA), implements the ERC strategy as set by the Scientific Council, and is in charge of the day-to-day grant administration.
It is responsible for executing the annual work programme, implementing calls for proposals, providing information and support to applicants, organising peer review evaluation, establishing and managing grant agreements, providing assistance to the ERC Scientific Council and communicating about the ERC.
Laurence Moreau is the Director of the ERCEA since June 2022.
ERC Board
The ERC Board ensures the effective link between the 2 constituents of the ERC, namely the Scientific Council and the ERC Executive Agency. It prepares the plenary meetings of the Scientific Council and serves as platform for exchange of information and ideas.
It is composed of 5 members: the ERC President, the 3 Vice-Presidents and the Director of the ERC Executive Agency.
ERCEA Steering Committee
The ERCEA Steering Committee is the body that supervises the operations of the ERCEA. It adopts the agency's annual work programmes, administrative budget and annual reports.
It is composed of 5 members and 2 observers:
- Marc Lemaître, Director-General DG RTD, Directorate General for Research and Innovation (Chair)
- Joanna Drake, Deputy-Director-General DG RTD, Implementation, Impact and Sustainable Investment Strategies (Vice-Chair)
- Matthias Will, Director, Common Implementation Centre, DG RTD
- Dirk Inzé, Member of the ERC Scientific Council
- Milena Žic Fuchs, Member of the ERC Scientific Council
- Maria Leptin, President of the European Research Council (Observer)
- Marco Umberto Moricca, Director, Careers and Staff Development, DG HR (Observer)
The European Commission appoints the members of the Steering Committee for a (renewable) period of 2 years.
Key figures
- Budget: € 16 billion (2021-2027) - 17% of the overall Horizon Europe budget
- Since 2007, ERC funded more than 16 000 projects and over 10 000 researchers. It evaluated more than 130 000 research proposals.
- Each ERC grantee employs on average 7 team members. Currently over 75 000 postdocs, PhD students and other staff are working in their research teams.
- ERC projects have so far led to over 2 200 patents and other IPR applications and ERC grantees founded or co-founded over 400 start-ups
- More than 200 000 articles published in scientific journals
- 14 Nobel Prizes, 7 Fields Medals, 11 Wolf Prizes and dozens of important prizes awarded to ERC grantees
- Over 850 research institutions are hosting ERC grantees who hold more than 97 nationalities