The Commission’s Ideas programme aims to promote European dynamism, creativity and excellence by supporting ‘investigator – driven’ research projects across all fields. The mechanism is designed to generate new knowledge and ‘frontier research’ is thus at the heart of the Ideas programme.

To this end, Framework Programme 7 will provide € 7bn to create a new body for this purpose; the European Research Council. The ERC will provide support for:

· individual research teams; there is no requirement for international consortia of institutions

· research in all fields of science and scholarship; there will be no specific programme of research priorities research will be investigator driven

· excellence; the only criterion for selection will be ‘excellence’; this will be evaluated by international panels assessing the research topic and quality of research teams

Two streams of activity are foreseen, namely the ‘ERC Starting Independent Researcher Grants’ scheme, and the ‘ERC Advanced Investigator Research Grant’ scheme. Starting Grants are aimed at improving career opportunities and independence especially for young researchers, while Advanced Grants represent attractive and prestigious grants for established leaders.

The first call for Starting Grants was published on 22 December 2006. We expect calls for the Advanced Grant scheme to follow in 2007.

This information is based on details provided in the ERC Work Programme (provisional).

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