The Expert Group charged with advising the European Council of Ministers on the establishment of an European Research Council (ERC) has delivered its final report, strongly supporting the need for an ERC.

The report calls for the establishment of a European Fund for Research Excellence, with the ERC managing the fund. “The first and main task for the ERC should be to support investigator-driven research of the highest quality selected through European competition,” it says.

The experts recommend an ERC budget of €2 billion per year, and suggest the ERC should be funded through the next Framework Programme, the centralized EU program for research funding.

“The ERC should primarily be a funding body for basic research and should cover all fields of science,” the report says. “It should… use a rigorous and transparent peer review process in deciding which research proposals to fund [and] encourage interdisciplinary and risk-taking projects, especially in emerging research areas.”

The concept of an ERC is widely supported in the European scientific community, but there are concerns about who should fund it, and by how much. Frederic Sgard, vice president of Euroscience, told The Scientist he sees “many good things” in the report. He is happy with the level of funding proposed, but is concerned about the intention to fund the ERC entirely from the central EU budget.

“In terms of both money and coordinating science in Europe it is important that national governments get involved in funding,” Sgard said. “If national governments are not involved at the start it would miss a very good opportunity.” However, he said, “We think national governments are going to be frightened by the amount of money which is necessary, so we have to find a way for governments to accept that.”

The European Science Foundation (ESF), another major player in the debate, has welcomed the recommendations. “The establishment of an ERC is strongly needed,” ESF Secretary General Enric Banda said in a statement. He emphasized, however, that the ERC will need to be properly coordinated with existing scientific bodies and structures.

“An ERC working in isolation will not have the desired effect,” Banda said. “Europe already has a considerable amount of excellent researchers. Now the time has come that they join efforts through competition and collaboration to reach the European dimension we lack.”

Some were not enthusiastic. Gottfried Schatz, president of the Swiss Science and Technology Council, told The Scientist, “I consider the present Framework Programmes a tragedy and an insult to Europe's science. Letting the same people also run the planned ERC would doom this enterprise from the start.” Schatz criticized the bureaucracy and enforced networking that he said accompany all Framework Programme activities.

Euroscience and the ESF intend to investigate the views of the major governments and try to define a common position for European scientists, to be presented and debated at the European Parliament in February 2004. The European Commission intends to present its own funding proposals in March 2004. Establishment of the ERC is likely to occur in 2007, but Sgard said “there should be at least some sort of political agreement in 2004.”