Albert Cardona

The "ERC President explains stricter application measures amid rising demand for funding" [1] and then scientists say, in an open letter, that's nuts, what you should be doing is increasing the overall funding of the Horizon program [2], because right now funding stands at a tiny fraction of the e.g., annual NIH budget in the US. Compare ~€2.5 billion/year for Horizon (for all disciplines) compared to over $45 billion/year for the NIH alone (NSF and Darpa would add even more). See [3] to sign the letter.

[1] https://erc.europa.eu/news-events/news/erc-president-explains-stricter-application-measures-amid-rising-demand-funding

[2] https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/9iartkuzo8ioomtrjlb0r/ERC-letter.pdf?rlkey=ejcop6ut98oxgue74gv6lk7mb&e=2&st=u95l81j3&dl=0

[3] Sign the letter: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfOm6zpq_zwP8PFgvR9hoFynsxGkXT_xOVwO3J1lXFqodE2sg/viewform

#academia #EU #Horizon #grants #EuropeanResearchCouncil

ERC President explains stricter application measures amid rising demand for funding

The text of an open letter sent by ERC President Maria Leptin to ERC panel members, grantees and other stakeholders on 16 April 2026.

ERC
Apr 22 at 9:18pmWeb
Show threadAlbert CardonaApr 22

As the open letters says:

"Given ERC’s demonstrated return on investment of∼€6 to ∼€11 in benefits or GDP gains per €1 invested, this would be one of the most cost-effective actions for European innovation policy."

In other words: raise the research budget (and stop throwing money at wars, the military, and leaking money through corruption).

Show threadAna ViñuelaApr 22

@albertcardona I'm so pissed of with this shit. And I'm pretty sure I'm never getting and most likely never even applying for an ERC grant. But this is insulting.

Everyone knows that the problem is that they're is no enough funding and their solution is to make it impossible for those already without money to even try more than once.

Show threadRiley S. FaelanApr 23
@albertcardona Er, in Europe's present-day context, the war mostly being spent on is the Russia's invasion on Ukraine. If we stopped funding Ukraine's defence, millions of peaceful people would die, and Europe would be much lessened.
Show threadhicksy2Apr 22
@albertcardona can you do another comparison where you contrast ERC budget plus research budgets of all countries within the ERC? ERC isn't the only game in town for government research funding. UKRI will be ~£10Bn annually by 2030, for instance. https://www.ukri.org/who-we-are/our-vision-and-strategy/updates-on-our-2026-strategy-and-budget/2026-budget-allocations/
2026 budget allocations

UKRI's total research and innovation budget is rising during this Spending Review period, reaching almost £10 billion annually by 2030.

Show threadAlbert CardonaApr 23

@hicksy2

Portugal, Spain, and many other countries have effectively a national scientific research budget of zero. Plus the EU has about double the population of the US.

Show threadLow Rank JackApr 23
@albertcardona
I agree but I'd prefer the EU to diversify its grants to help research by not only promoting super prestigious ERC grants with massive O(1M€) budgets for each (which can be hard to manage btw), but also more smaller grants O(100k€), still for open research, with a higher acceptance rate.