Mixed feelings for EU-LIFE over ERC success

EU-LIFE European research centres have obtained 14 new European Research Council Starting and Consolidator Grants in the latest competitions, yet is concerned over the proposed cuts to the blue sky body under the Juncker Investment Plan.

The latest round of funding takes the total of ERC-funded grants currently running in centres belonging to the alliance to over 100. EU-LIFE partners have a success rate of at least three times higher than the general success rate of Starting and Consolidator Grants. The winning proposals cover topics in neurosciences, structural biology and human disease, chromosome architecture and genome segregation.

However, the news comes as the announced cuts in the Horizon 2020 budget (including ERC) could jeopardise Europe’s competitiveness in future research and innovation, according to EU-LIFE.

Commenting, Luis Serrano, chair of EU-LIFE and Director of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), said: “These results are good news for EU-LIFE partners. They show we are at the forefront of excellent research in Europe. But our celebrations are dampened because we know that the announced cuts will endanger the future competitiveness of European science.

“Horizon 2020 success rates are already extremely low, in fact at a critical level of less than 3% where random effects determine who is funded. Currently, many top researchers and projects go unfunded. A reduction of the budget by Junker’s plan will reduce the success rate even further. The repercussion is that a large number of leading scientists in Europe will spend a significant amount of their time writing grants that have an absurdly low chance of success. “The situation is extremely deleterious for the competitiveness of European science”.

Jo Bury, EU-LIFE vice-chair and director of the life sciences research institute VIB, described cuts to the ERC budget as “probably the worst thing to do in the current economic instability” and that such budget cuts could jeopardise Europe’s “solid reputation as a leader in the knowledge-based sectors that are driven by research and innovation”.

EU-LIFE is an alliance of top research centres in life sciences, helping to support and strengthen European research excellence.