The European Commission (EC) has promised to improve how research is funded in Europe. Responding to a critique of the European Research Council (ERC) today (October 22), the EC provided timelines for appointing a scientist to head the council and for developing faster reimbursement procedures for peer reviewers of ERC grants.

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These changes will make the ERC "more stable and efficient in the long term," said Catherine Ray, a spokesperson for the EC, adding that the council is a "work in progress," having been started just two years ago.

In July, a panel of experts, led by Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the former president of Latvia, and including former NIH director Elias Zerhouni, criticized the ERC's overly bureaucratic organization and its sluggish distribution of funds. The panel also criticized the fact that non-scientists held the ERC's top positions. As an example of the sharp language used in the report, one passage reads: "...it should not be acceptable today in Europe that nonscientists who have not had the direct experience of conducting successful science enterprises themselves run major European research programmes!"

In response, the ERC's Scientific Council issued a statement in late August agreeing with many points made in the recommendations and suggesting strategies for implementing change. For example, the council promised that the next chair of the ERC's executive agency would be a working scientist rather than an administrator, and that procedures to select such a person would be developed.

Today's communication from the EC, addressed to the EU's two legislative bodies, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, supported the idea of appointing a scientist to lead the ERC, but was not specific about how to solve a number of issues raised by the July report. It did, however set a short time-frame on a number of improvements, such as developing a faster method for compensating peer reviewers (fourth quarter, 2009), beginning the process of making the ERC's operations more transparent (fourth quarter, 2009) and creating a committee that would advise the ERC on conflicts of interest, fraud and ethical issues (second quarter 2010).

Many of the short-term improvements can be made internally, said Ray, but the policies that govern how funding is dispersed are regulated by the European Union and some "were not well adapted to research activity." Adjusting financial policies will require the approval of the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, and Ray said that the EC will shortly begin discussions with the parliament and the Council of Ministers to align procedures closer to "what research activities require."

Correction (October 23rd, 2009): The original version of this article stated that the communication from the EC had been addressed to the European Parliament and the ERC. In fact it was addressed to the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, the EU's two legislative bodies. Additionally, adjustments made to the financial policies will require the approval of both the Parliament and the Council. The corrections have been made. The Scientist regrets the error.


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