The European Research Council (ERC) provides attractive, long-term funding to support excellent investigators and their research teams to pursue ground-breaking, high gain and high risk research.

Call objectives

The ERC operates four main grant programmes to support projects, and investigators, at progressive stages of development: this Advanced Grant, plus the Proof of Concept Grant, Starting Grant and Consolidator Grant.

Research funded by the ERC is expected to lead to advances at the frontiers of knowledge and to set a clear and inspirational target for frontier research across Europe. It operates using an 'investigator-driven' approach based solely on scientific excellence to solicit new opportunities and directions in any field of research, as identified by researchers themselves, rather than support priorities set by parties outside of the research community. This 'bottom-up' attitude to research funding ensures that support is aimed primarily at new and promising opportunities, with a greater degree of flexibility.

Running in parallel with its research funding support objectives, the ERC also aims to fortify and shape the European research system, piloted by high quality peer review, the establishment of international benchmarks of success, and the provision of up-to-date information on who is succeeding and why.

Overall, the ERC aims to:

• Support the best of the best in Europe across all fields of science, scholarship and engineering.
• Promote wholly investigator-driven or 'bottom-up' frontier research.
• Encourage the work of the established and next generation of independent top research leaders in Europe.
• Reward innovative proposals by placing emphasis on the quality of the idea rather than the research area.
• Raise the status and visibility of European frontier research and the very best researchers of today and tomorrow.

Applicants for the ERC Advanced Grants - called Principal Investigators (PI) - are expected to be active researchers who have a track-record of significant research achievements in the last 10 years.

The Principal Investigators should be exceptional leaders in terms of originality and significance of their research contributions. No specific eligibility criteria with respect to the academic requirements are foreseen.

Applications can be made in any field of research. The ERC's grants operate on a 'bottom-up' basis without predetermined priorities.

Research must be conducted in a public or private research organisation (known as a Host Institution/HI). It could be the HI where the applicant already works, or any other HI located in one of the EU Member States or Associated Countries.

Applications for an ERC grant must be submitted by a single Principal Investigator (PI) in conjunction with and on behalf of their Host Institution, called the applicant legal entity.

Grants are awarded to the Host Institution with the explicit commitment that this institution offers appropriate conditions for the Principal Investigator independently to direct the research and manage its funding for the duration of the project.

Any type of legal entity, including universities, research centres and undertakings can host the PI and his/her team. Legally the Host Institution must be based in one of the EU Member States, or one of the Associated Countries.

The PI does not necessarily need to be working at the Host Institution at the time when the proposal is submitted. However, a mutual agreement and the Host Institution's commitment on how the relationship will be established are necessary, should the proposal be successful.

ERC grants support projects carried out by an individual researcher who can employ researchers of any nationality as team members. It is also possible to have one or more team members located in a non-European country.

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