The council will in future operate as an autonomous Executive Agency with 200 staff. Director Jack Metthey said the ERC is reaching a new degree of maturity. “This is a landmark in the history of the ERC. We are confident that the success of the ERC, which has already funded some 600 outstanding frontier research projects, will be well served by this new structure and its staff.”
As an Executive Agency the ERC is charged with implementing the Seventh Framework Programme’s “Ideas” programme according to the strategies and methodologies defined by the independent ERC Scientific Council. The Executive Agency operates on the basis of the powers delegated to it by the European Commission, which has the ultimate political responsibility for the “Ideas” programme.
Receive the Funding Newswire each Tuesday, our Policy Bulletin each Thursday, and news about bridging Europe’s east-west innovation gap twice a month in The Widening. 
A unique international forum for public research organisations and companies to connect their external engagement with strategic interests around their R&D system.