European Research Council – ERC grants

Contact at Estonian Research Council
Kristin Kraav
Phone: +372 730 0337
E-mail: kristin.kraav@etag.ee

Principal Investigators who wish to apply for ERC grants need to do so through the EU Funding & Tenders Portal, which contains all information on each call. More information on the European Research Council (ERC) in general, including its mission and organisation, a description of its funding schemes, a step-by-step application guide and details on funded projects is available at the website of the European Research Council.

ERC Work Programme 2023

The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator GrantsAdvanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council, and the ERC President is currently Professor Maria Leptin. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion as part of the Horizon Europe programme, under the responsibility of the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel.

Applications can be made in any field of research. The ERC’s frontier research grants operate on a ‘bottom-up’ basis without predetermined priorities. The ERC puts particular emphasis on the frontiers of science, scholarship and engineering. In particular, it encourages proposals of a multi- or interdisciplinary nature which cross the boundaries between different fields of research, pioneering proposals addressing new and emerging fields of research or proposals introducing unconventional, innovative approaches and scientific inventions.