UPDATE: Please note that the 2021 Starting Grants call deadline has now been extended to April 12th.
€1.9 billion will be made available by the European Research Council (ERC) in 2021 to allow some 1,000 top researchers to pursue frontier research. As in previous years, most of the funding (66%) is earmarked for early- to mid-career scientists and scholars. The funding will also support jobs for an estimated 6,860 postdoctoral researchers, PhD students, and other research staff employed in ERC-funded teams.
Established by the ERC Scientific Council, the 2021 work programme was adopted on 22 February by the European Commission. This work program is the first approved under the 2021-2027 European Union Framework Program for Research and Innovation, Horizon Europe.
The 2021 work program introduces some novelties, such as interviews now being part of the evaluation process also for Advanced Grant applicants and two new evaluation panels. Due to the transition from Horizon 2020 to Horizon Europe, the call calendar is shifted compared to the calendars of previous years, and the Synergy and Proof of Concept calls will not open under this year’s work program.
Calls Calendar and Submission Deadlines
The work program published on February 22nd includes a calendar of grant competitions.
The Starting Grant call opened on February 25th, 2021. While the initial plan was to close the call on March 24th, it should be noted that the deadline for submission of applications has been extended until April 8th. The extension of the deadline is intended to give as much time to Starting Grant applicants as possible while preserving the evaluation calendar and the budgetary allocation.
The Consolidator Grant call will open on March 11th, 2021 and the Advanced Grant on May 20th, 2021.
The eligibility windows for Starting and Consolidator Grant applicants follow the standard pattern, with January 1st, 2021 as the reference date.
Synergy Grants will not be available under this work programme. Nonetheless, the ERC Scientific Council is expecting to be able to open the first Synergy Grant call of Horizon Europe still this summer, with funding to be provided under the next work program.
Similarly, the Proof of Concept Grants are not available under this work program, but a call is expected to open in the second half of this year under the next work program.
The Scientific Council expects the call schedule to be back to more familiar opening and closing timeframes by mid-2022. These shifts in the calls timetable will not affect the eligibility periods of candidates applying to Starting and Consolidator Grants.
Note that the date format in this table is DD/MM/YYYY.
Interviews for Advanced Grant applicants
Bringing the Advanced Grants evaluation process in line with that of the Starting and Consolidator Grants, researchers whose proposals reach the second step of the Advanced Grant evaluation will now be invited to present their proposal to the evaluation panel in an interview.
ERC panel structure redefined
Two entirely new evaluation panels have been added to the ERC Panel Structure: SH7 - Human Mobility Environment and Space, and PE11 – Materials Engineering. The introduction of these two new panels is part of a broader review of the panel structure by the ERC Scientific Council, redefining the contours of all panels, enriching their descriptors and taking into account the balance between panels in terms of the number of proposals assessed in each call. See the Panel structure for ERC calls 2021 and 2022.
Open science
As required by the new Horizon Europe regulation, researchers who benefit from ERC funding under the Horizon Europe program will now be required to submit a data management plan within the first six months of their project implementation.
Associated countries
At the date of the publication of the work program, there are no countries associated to Horizon Europe. However, applicants established in countries associated to the previous Framework Program, Horizon 2020, and in countries that are negotiating association agreements with the European Union, including the United Kingdom, may apply to the calls under this work program.
The funding of successful applicants based in countries outside of the European Union will depend on whether an association agreement between their country and the European Union will be in place at the time of the signature of the grant agreements for the call to which they applied.
Potential applicants based outside of the European Union should refer to the text in the Work Program, on page 3 and Annex 3, as well as to the calls calendar for the indicative dates for the signature of the grant agreements of each call.