Funding Europe's Brightest Brains
February 28, 2007
The European Union has launched a European Research Council (ERC) to fund pioneering work in social, economic and environmental areas. It hopes to keep its top researchers in Europe and attract new scientists to the continent as a result.
The ERC will fund a "champions league" of scientists able to tackle problems ranging from epidemics to global warming, said EU Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potočnik at the launch event in Berlin on Tuesday.
Five years in the making, the ERC has a budget of 7.5 billion euros ($9.9 billion) for the period 2007 to 2013.
The council's creation is a response to longtime criticism at the EU that it has not invested enough in research and development compared to the United States, for example.
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel -- whose country holds the rotating EU presidency -- said that Europe lacked some 700,000 researchers, particularly in energy and climate studies. But if the EU vigorously pursued the world's best brains, it could maintain its prosperity.
"Research and new technologies can be driving motors for a new economic dynamic," said Merkel, herself a trained physicist. "They can even provide a basis for growth in Europe, for keeping and increasing our prosperity and competitiveness."
Making Europe a major player
The ERC has pledged to prioritize basic research, and award grants based solely on projects' scientific merits, not politics.
"For the first time, European research funding is now provided for basic research," said German Research Minister Annette Schavan. "The ERC is the first body of experts at EU level which takes largely independent funding decisions based solely on the excellence of the basic research projects proposed."
A Scientific Council made up of 22 renowned scientists from across Europe governs the agency. They come from a variety of scientific and academic backgrounds.
The council's chairman Fotis Kafatos said he hoped the organization would be a catalyst for change.
"It will be an interesting yardstick to see if we have succeeded in bringing people back into Europe who had left, or have attracted new talent into Europe," Kafatos, a professor at Imperial College London, told reporters.
Europe has been weak in cutting-edge technology
A European Commission study released last week showed that the EU is narrowing its innovation gap with the United States and Japan, although performances vary widely among the bloc's members.
EU politicians have long fretted over Europe's weak performance in generating cutting-edge technology. But most members have done little to meet a target of investing the equivalent of at least three percent of gross domestic product in research and innovation by 2010.
In 2005, EU members states watered down an ambitious program to boost the bloc's competitiveness. They had consistently failed to meet the original targets when the program was launched in 2000 in Lisbon with the aim of making the EU the most competitive economy in the world.