Germany's Winnacker named to new European Research Council

The appointment of Winnacker -  a heavyweight in the politics of science in Europe -  underscores the political importance of the new agency, which is the centerpiece of the European Union's new, €54.5 billion, seven-year technology programme. The agency, to begin operation this Winter, aims to award grants solely on scientific merit, by peer-review -  much the way the highly respected U.S. National Science Foundation operates. In the past, Brussels has often been criticized for awarding grants by political favouritism, with substandard scientific results.

As if to underscore the agency's independence, EU science and research commissioner Janez Potocnik praised the nomination by the ERC's Scientific Council as "further demonstration of the Commission's determination to let the ERC make its own decisions, for the good of European science." Potocnik has been battling this year to keep the European Parliament from adding political strings to legislation creating the agency.

Winnacker, a molecular biologist from the University of Munich, was named to lead the ERC for its first two-and-a-half years. He will be succeeded for the next two-and-a-half years by a Catalan economist, Prof. Andreu Mas-Colell, of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Mas-Colell is also president of the main learned society for European economists, the European Economic Association, and was from 2000 to 2003 Catalan minister for universities and research. The ERC secretary-general reports to its governing Scientific Council, chaired by Prof. Fotis C. Kafatos of Imperial College London.

Winnacker was an early advocate for an ERC. In a 2002 essay he wrote, for Science Magazine, he noted that "only a small portion of science takes place at the European level" and argued for a Europe-wide funding agency to improve cross-border cooperation. That would make for better science, especially in the "small-science" areas that, unlike space or nuclear research, don't benefit from the big-ticket projects politicians normally favour. He is also no stranger to controversy, having been an early advocate of liberalizing gene research in heavily-regulated Germany. He was co-founder of what is now one of the country's most active genetic labs, Genzentrum in Munich.

The appointment also underscores the ERC's aim to start off collaborating, rather than competing, with existing national funding agencies - an occasional criticism of the new agency. Besides having been president of Europe's largest such funding body, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Winnacker was eloquent on his vision of how the ERC should fit into European science. In a 2002 interview with EMBO Report, he said:

"My vision of a European Research Council is rather that of a Greek temple whose columns are the national research councils and whose roof is the European council."