Informal Information Session


The ERC is the first pan European funding body set up to support the best frontier research in Europe. Created by the European Commission in 2007 (FP7). It has a total budget of € 13 billion for Horizon 2020 (EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation / 2014-2020). The ERC aims to stimulate scientific excellence in Europe by supporting the very best scientists, scholars and engineers in any field of research. Through Europe wide peer reviewed competition with scientific excellence as the sole selection criterion the brightest ideas at the frontiers of knowledge are funded. There are neither thematic priorities, nor geographical quotas. The competitions are open to top researchers from anywhere in the world, provided they are based in or are moving to Europe. 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.

The ERC has a set of funding instruments providing opportunities to the most promising and top researchers:

  • ERC Starting Grant for young, early-career top researchers (2-7 years after PhD) -up to 2 million euro for a period of 5 years
  • ERC Consolidator Grant for already independent excellent researchers (7-12 years after PhD) -up to 2.75 million euro for a period of 5 years
  • ERC Advanced Grant for senior research leaders with significant research achievements in the last 10 years -up to 3.5 million euro for a period of 5 years
  • ERC Proof of Concept Grants for ERC grant holders who want to check the market and/or innovation potential of research results from ERC-projects -up to 150,000 euro for a period of 12 months

This symposium, bringing together grantees, evaluators, scientific officer, aims to give an overview of ERC activities. All the main aspects of the ERC will be presented in details: ERC Scientific Council policy, role and place of the ERC in the current Framework Programme (Horizon 2020), funding schemes and evaluation process, update on the latest results, follow-up of ERC funded projects.