The European Research Council supports frontier research, cross disciplinary proposals and pioneering ideas in new and emerging fields which introduce unconventional and innovative approaches. The ERC's mission is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields of research, on the basis of scientific excellence. A total budget of 13 095 million euro is available for the implementation of the ERC funding schemes under Horizon 2020.

What are the main ERC principles?

• 1 researcher; 1 host institution; 1 project; 1 selection criterion: scientific excellence
• No consortia, no networks, no co-financing
• Applications can be made in any field of research, including social sciences and humanities
• Independent researchers from anywhere in the world, of any age and career stage can apply
• Host institutions must provide conditions for the researcher to direct the research and manage its funding
• The grant is 'portable' to another host institution, if the grantholder wishes so
• Research must be carried out in one of the 28 EU member states or associated countries

What type of grants does the ERC fund?

• ERC Starting Grant for young, early-career top researchers (2-7 years after PhD) -up to 2 million euro for a period of 5 years.
• ERC Consolidator Grant for already independent excellent researchers 7-12 years after PhD) -up to 2.75 million euro for a period of 5 years.
• ERC Advanced Grant for senior research leaders with significant research achievements in the last 10 years -up to 3.5 million euro for a period of 5 years.
• ERC Proof of Concept Grants for ERC grant holders who want to check the market and/or innovation potential of research results from ERC-projects -up to 150,000 euro for a period of 12 months.
• ERC Synergy Grants for small groups of individual researchers -up to 15 million euro for a period up to 6 years.