The European Research Council (ERC) has agreed on the peer review process to be used to select its future projects. The Strategy note on the ERC peer review panel structure - Starting Grants, addressing both the structure and the composition of these panels, states that the panels will be based on five 'overriding principles': coherence across all broad research domains and fields, a forward-looking approach, encouragement to interdisciplinarity, funding allocations independent of the panel structure and flexibility and inclusiveness.
The ERC is set to fund innovative, ground-breaking basic research, not linked to any political prioritites, such as for example the different thematic research areas of the FP7. Therefore, for the succes of ERC, will depend on the the way it selects the projects it will fund.
In the beginning, the ERC will give priority to independent researchers who are at the stage of establishing their first research team or doing their own independent research. This grant (Starting Independent Research Grant Scheme) will count for around a third of the ERC's annual budget (300-350 million euro a year). Around 200 grants are expected to be made annually, each for up to 5 years. The ERC is expected to be operational right from the start of the year 2007.
