Europe’s vision is ambitious: the European Union wants to become the world’s most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economic region by 2010. The aim is to encourage the emergence of a European Research Area (ERA). In 2007 the plan took on concrete form with the founding of the European Research Council (ERC) and the decision to set up the European Institute of Technology (EIT). The EU intends to use the EIT to promote higher education, research and innovation more substantially and to bundle the knowledge of people working in the fields of innovation and technology transfer. The central idea of this virtual EU university is to create a European network of universities, research organizations, companies and innovation centres. Seed capital of around 309 million euros has been made available for the initial phase up to 2013, during which research will focus on climate and energy, information and communication technology.
The European Research Council was set up as part of the 7th EU Framework Programme for Research; the motivation was to promote research in frontier areas of knowledge and open up new opportunities for the world’s most gifted researchers. The Council, whose aim is to promote basic research in all disciplines Europe-wide, started work during Germany’s Presidency of the European Council in the first half of 2007. Up to 2013 the ERC will have over 7.5 billion euros from the 54.4-billion-euro budget of the Framework Programme for Research at its disposal. In 2008 and 2009 the ERC intends to pay out 500 million euros a year to experienced researchers.
In 2007 the focus was on promoting the next generation of scientists. ERC Secretary General Professor Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, a recognized researcher and science manager who was President of the German Research Foundation (DFG) for many years, believes it is important to create good prospects for young scientists and to give them a chance to carry out independent research early on in their careers. This is the objective pursued by the ERC with its “starting grants”, which sponsor the young researchers to the tune of up to two million euros for a five-year period. The grants were first awarded in 2007. An international panel of experts examined over 9,000 applications from all over Europe. 300 up-and-coming scientists from 32 countries are now being supported. They are working at 170 research institutes in 21 different countries. According to Winnacker, Germany has “done pretty well”. According to the ERC, about 13% of the grant recipients come from Germany, putting their country top of the list. Over 11% of the grants went to researchers working at German institutions; here, Germany was in third place after France and the UK. For example, two physicists at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching near Munich will receive 1.3 million euros each for five years.
