ERC banks on new ‘super grants’ to attract top researchers

Europe has launched new €7 million (£6 million) grants at a time when increased political oversight of research in the US is pushing more scholars to consider leaving the country, but experts say the scheme is not big enough to seriously move the dial on international mobility.

The European Research Council (ERC) has opened applications for its prestigious ERC Plus Grants, which will offer up to €7 million over seven years to support ambitious research projects at European institutions. Researchers around the world can apply.

The grants are among several programmes under the European Commission’s wider “Choose Europe” initiative, which aims to attract and retain international research talent.

Policymakers are looking to make Europe a more appealing destination for international researchers as concerns grow over academic freedom and cuts to federal research in the US.

“American universities have some of the most productive scholars across the sciences, humanities and social sciences,” said Isaac Kamola, director of the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom at the American Association of University Professors.

“It’s not surprising, therefore, that in the toxic higher education environment created by [Donald] Trump and his MAGA toadies…that European universities would be incredibly attractive for US-based scholars.”

Kamola said that conversations about moving overseas were common among US academics.

“The idea of moving to Europe to teach is a conversation we regularly have within the profession,” he said. “It seems like every other week there’s another story of a promising scholar leaving for overseas.”

Jennifer Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said her organisation too had witnessed growing interest in opportunities outside the US.

“We have definitely seen, since the Trump administration began in 2025, researchers, academics and professors looking for opportunities overseas,” she said, describing the trend as part of a broader phenomenon of “science asylum”.

Jones said that a recent proposal from the White House Office of Management and Budget that would give political appointees more influence over research funding decisions had intensified concerns about academic freedom.

“The overwhelming public response to this by science organisations, universities and unions tells me that this is indeed an extremely serious threat,” she added. “I don’t know if it’s the final nail in the coffin [the deciding factor for researchers considering moving], but it’s certainly a big one.”

When applications for the ERC Plus Grants opened, the research council highlighted that it had seen a sharp rise in the number of US-based researchers making bids for its other grants.

While Jones said that the ERC’s seven-year grants would be attractive to many researchers, she stressed that stability was an even bigger draw than the money itself.

“That stability and that lack of fear is what is really missing right now in the US science and research community,” she said. “It signals an opportunity to be somewhere that has a long eye and values science and creates stability.”

But those who study research mobility question whether the 30 grants on offer are enough to truly capitalise on increased interest from US-based scholars and attract enough foreign talent to boost the continent’s competitiveness.

Marek Kwiek, professor of higher education and director of the Center for Public Policy Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań in Poland, described the programme as “a nice gesture” towards researchers finding it harder to continue their work in the US, but said that its overall impact was likely to be limited.

“From the perspective of the continent, these are very small numbers in a region where there are several hundred thousand publishing scientists,” he said.

Funding about 30 researchers a year would eventually support more than 100 principal investigators and hundreds of team members, Kwiek said, but this was unlikely to significantly enhance Europe’s ability to attract global research talent.

“I do not think it can make a meaningful difference considering its small scope,” he said, adding that Europe’s “heavily underfunded” science system could make the grants less appealing to world-leading researchers.

Marco Seeber, a professor at the University of Agder in Norway whose research focuses on higher education, said the scheme had symbolic value but there was a wider need to address structural barriers that researchers face in Europe.

“The problem is that these funding schemes have a very low success rate. The amount of money for a single grant is large, but there are not many grants,” he said.

He said evidence about the benefits of such schemes was mixed, pointing to a paper that found that while ERC funding helped recipients to secure additional grants, its effects on scientific output were more modest.

“You’re putting a lot of resources into a black box that you don’t know if it works,” he said. “In order to nurture a research system that’s really working and attractive, there should be structural changes, which are difficult to implement but can have long-term effects compared with just launching another funding initiative.”

seher.asaf@timeshighereducation.com