Programme: Horizon Europe
Priority: Excellent Science
Objective: European Research Council
Budget: 500 M€
Opening Date: 11-07-2024
Deadline: 06-11-2024
Call Documents: Call ERC-2025-SyG
Link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/erc-2025-syg
Objective of the European Research Council is to sustain excellence research, with a bottom-up approach, enhancing dynamism and creativity of European frontier research, by financing ambitious projects led by Principal Investigators with internationally relevant curricula.
All scientific fields are eligible. ERC encourages interdisciplinary proposals that cross the boundaries between different fields of research, pioneering proposals addressing emerging areas of research or introducing innovative and unconventional approaches and scientific inventions.
The action is addressed to groups of 2-4 Principal Investigators that bring together skills, knowledges, experiences and methodologies, necessary to propose and deal with complicated and ambitious research that could not be obtained working alone. One of the Principal Investigators must be designated as the Corresponding Principal Investigator that will act as contact on behalf of the group.
The proposals are submitted by the Corresponding Principal Investigator in conjunction with his/her own host institution.
The Principal Investigators are required to spend at least 30% of their total working time on the financed project and to conduct overall their activity in an EU Member State or Associated Country for at least 50% [except the PI hosted and engaged by an institution of a country outside of the EU or Associated Countries].
The budget allocated by the European Commission for this deadline is 500 M€, with a number of granted projects foreseen in 48.
The maximum amount per grant agreement is foreseen in 10 M€ for a period of 6 years [to reduce pro rata in the event of projects of a shorter duration], with a potential increase of maximum 4 M€.
The EC financial contribution will take the form of the reimbursement of 100% of the total eligible and approved direct costs and a flat rate of 25% for indirect costs calculated on the total eligible direct costs [excluding the direct costs for subcontracting].
Principal Investigators are engaged and hosted by a legal entity located in an EU Member State or Associated Country [max. 4 Host Institutions].
It is foreseen the possibility that one of the involved Principal Investigators, except the Corresponding Principal Investigator, could be hosted by an institution of a country outside of the EU or Associated Countries.
The grant agreements shall be signed by the European Research Council Executive Agency and the institution hosting the Corresponding Principal Investigator.
Normally the Principal Investigators will be employed by the host institution for at least the duration of the project; an integrative agreement between the Principal Investigator and the host institution will be signed for the regulation of rights and duties of the parties.
As of 2024, CV and track record of the PI will form a single document, in which he/she will include qualifications, training and work experiences, highlighting significant career moments through listing research outputs [max. 10] and recognition obtained. The information will be taken into consideration for the PI profile evaluation, in order to demonstrate the advanced knowledge acquired by the PI in his/her field of research and the candidate’s ability to successfully implement the proposed project.
Within this action, the PIs will also have to demonstrate that their group has the scientific elements and the collaborative arrangements necessary to address the complexity of the proposed research question.
The proposals will be evaluated by international panels of experts based on the sole criterion of scientific excellence, with a focus, greater than previous calls, on the quality of the project, in particular in relation to the innovative aspect, ambition and feasibility of the research proposal, always considering three evaluation steps.
As in the previous WP, in the first evaluation step the highest score [A] will be divided into A invited and A not invited, to distinguish excellent quality proposals between those within the threshold and those not invited in the second step of evaluation. Proposals evaluated A not invited may be submitted to the call of the following year.
To participate in the ERC calls 2025 [Starting, Consolidator, Advanced and Synergy Grants], some restrictions have been introduced for PIs that applied under ERC WP 2024 and 2023. Below a summarizing scheme.
