Brussels, 23/12/2010 (Agence Europe) - On 21 December, the European Commission announced the creation of a task force to look into the various options for the future of the European Research Council (ERC), a body set up in 2007. "The ERC has been a great success already and we need to learn from experience and build on the excellent work already done. The Task Force will help us take some final decisions on how best to equip the ERC to play the key role it will have in the Innovation Union and in the Eighth Framework Programme", said Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the European Commissioner for Research.
The task force was set up by request of the Scientific Council of the ERC and is the follow-up to a full analysis of the structures and mechanisms of the ERC carried out last year by a team of experts. It is chaired by the director general DG Research, Mr Robert-Jan Smits, and involves representatives of the relevant services of the Commission and representatives of the Scientific Council of the ERC, including its president, Helga Nowotny. It will also have two external members, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the former president of the Republic of Latvia and former chair of the review panel of the ERC, and Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, former secretary general of the ERC.
The task force will examine "unresolved" questions and look into the "possible options" for governments to guarantee the long-term stability and structure of the ERC within the European Research Area and in the context of the new Treaty of Lisbon, says the Commission. Currently, the ERC has a double structure: a Scientific Council made up of 22 high-level researchers, which defines the scientific strategy, and an executive agency responsible for carrying out the work.
The task force, which has already held its first meeting, intends to finish its work within six months, or well before the decision on the forthcoming framework programme (8th FP), in order to give the Council and Parliament enough time to hold an in-depth debate. In the first quarter of 2011, the Commission will launch an open consultation on all questions related to the 8th FP, with a formal proposal to be submitted to the Council and the Parliament at the end of the year. The 8th FP will enter into force in January 2014. It is worth noting that France's Jean-Pierre Audy (EPP) was recently selected by his political group to be the future rapporteur on the revision of the seventh framework programme of research. "2007-2013 is a long time. It is important that we revise this programme halfway through, in order to ensure that it still responds to the needs of the European policies and the Lisbon Strategy, which aims to make Europe the world's most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy ", said the MEP.
The ERC is the first pan-European body for the financing of pioneering fundamental research. It aims to stimulate scientific excellence in Europe, by supporting the best and most creative researchers of all nationalities and all scientific disciplines, including social sciences and humanities. The ERC funds both top senior sciences ("ERC Advanced Grants") and younger, early-career researchers ("ERC Starting Grants"). The ERC has a budget of 7.5 billion euros from the "Ideas" program, which is part of the seventh framework programme of research, for the period 2007-2013. So far, the ERC has funded 1729 high-level researchers (including one Nobel Prize winner in 2010, Mr Konstantin Novoselov), who have carried out top-quality research projects in Europe. The individual subsidies granted have reached 3.5 million euros and some 2.5 billion euros have been allocated to excellent innovative exploratory research projects. More than 700 scientific publications have been linked to ERC projects. (B.C./trans.fl)