Potocnik gives first progress report on the European Research Council

Janez Potočnik, European Commissioner for Science and Research, gave a first progress report on the European Research Council (ERC) at a meeting in Paris this week, telling researchers who won the first round of grants, “You now have the job, more than anyone else, of demonstrating the value of the ERC.”

By undertaking excellent research, moving forward the frontiers of knowledge and leading the way, the researchers would demonstrate that European science can be the very best in the world, Potocnik told delegates.  

Potočnik also wants the ERC grants to have a positive effect on research institutions which host ERC grant holders. “It will be very interesting to hear how the ERC has affected the outlook and strategies of these organisations and the extent to which it is contributing to a positive environment for them,” he said.

Another important aspect of the ERC is its international dimension. “The ERC may be called the European Research Council, but its benefits will spread beyond Europe's borders,” said Potočnik. While Principal Investigators funded by the ERC need to do the research work in an EU or associated country, he or she can be of any nationality, and other research team members can come from further afield. “This means, the ERC can draw on excellence from around the world,” Potočnik said.

As a result the ERC is able to play a wider part in strengthening European research as a whole. “The ERC’s flexibility, adaptability and research excellence are exactly what we want to recreate in the rest of the European Research Area,” Potočnik told delegates.

Potočnik also underlined the importance of the ERC’s independence, a commitment he made to the ERC Scientific Council when it first met three years ago, saying, “The trust and confidence of the research community, and thereby the success of this initiative, necessitated a fully autonomous ERC and a Scientific Council with real authority over scientific strategy and scientific management. That is the way the ERC has been run from the beginning; a totally new and very successful approach.”

It is not only the researchers themselves who have taken so strongly to the ERC. Several national research-funding organisations, notably the French funding agency, the ANR, have developed ad hoc complementary measures to further respond to this enthusiastic reaction of the young scientific community.

“These are the first signs of the impact of the ERC in the European research landscape. I think that we will see, over the years to come, just how profound its effects will be,” Potočnik concluded.