European Research Council - History

History

The idea of having a funding mechanism for basic research at the EU level has been discussed and supported among European scientists for a long time. However, its realization was held back at the political level because the European Treaty, which is the document that forms the legal basis of the EU, was interpreted as allowing EU funding only to strengthen the scientific and technological base of European industry — that is, only funding for applied research rather than basic research. In conjunction with the Lisbon declaration in 2000, leaders of the EU, in particular the European Commissioner for Research at the time, Philippe Busquin, realized that the European Treaty had to be reinterpreted; a transformation of European economy from traditional manufacturing to a knowledge-based economy has to involve the enhanced support at the European level for science of all kinds, including fundamental science as well as applied science.

Several important initiatives, which paved the way for the ERC, were taken at the beginning of the century by a number of organizations and individuals and a series of communications in the scientific literature laid out the need for a research council in Europe.

In 2002, a high-level expert group was commissioned to explore the possibilities of creating an ERC. This group concluded that the EU should establish an ERC to support basic research. A number of other expert groups, such as one commissioned by the European Science Foundation, another charged with the task of analyzing the economic implications of the Lisbon declaration and a high level group commissioned by the European Commission, also arrived at a similar conclusion and boosted the idea of establishing an ERC. With the ice broken, scientists and politicians have since strongly supported the establishment of an ERC. In 2006, the European Parliament and EU Council of Ministers accepted the Seventh Framework Programme for the European Union’s support for research, of which the ERC was a part. In the ERC kick-off conference in Berlin, various speakers talked of ‘an idea whose time has come’, ‘a European factory of ideas’, ‘a champions’ league’, ‘a great day for Europe and a great day for science’, and the beginning of a ‘snowball effect’.