By Ksenia Bagrintseva, senior grant writer & ERC expert - GO
The 2025 ERC work program has been officially adopted and published on July 10th, 2024 link. In this article, we have summarized the main changes, as compared to previous programs:
Changes to the presentation of the PI profile:
The CV and Track Record parts (in the B1) have been combined and simplified, and now are limited to 4 pages. This section should include personal details, education, key qualifications, current position(s) and relevant previous positions, a list of up to ten research outputs that demonstrate how the applicant has advanced knowledge in their field, with an emphasis on more recent achievements, and a list of selected examples of significant peer recognition. Comparing to the previous B1 template, note that the “Early achievements” and “Ten-years” track record with respective requirements were removed.
Instead, the following expectations are mentioned:
A Starting Grant Principal Investigator should have already shown evidence of the potential for research independence, for example by having produced at least one important publication as the main author or without the participation of their PhD supervisor.
A Consolidator Grant Principal Investigator should have already shown evidence of research independence.
An Advanced Grant Principal Investigator is expected to be an active researcher and to have a track record of significant research achievements.
Another significant change in this section is that applicants are invited to provide a short narrative description of their achievements and potential career breaks. With regards to the researcher’s career path, please note that now, upon a request for eligibility window extension, a respective document should be submitted indicating the request.
Lump sum funding for Advanced Grants:
The lump sum will cover the beneficiaries’ estimated costs for the project and will be based on the work carried out and reported, irrespective of the actual costs incurred for the project and/or the successful outcome of the project activities. The maximum budget will remain EUR 2,500,000 for a period of 5 years, including additional funding up to EUR 1,000,000.
For Advanced Grants, the Principal Investigator will have the flexibility to use the lump sum contribution as they see fit, as long as the project is implemented as agreed. Where additional funding (extra budget) is awarded, the same flexibility can be applied to that part of the budget.
Changes to the evaluation process:
The following questions in the evaluation form were removed: high risk-high gain and the development of novel methodology. The following questions were edited: feasibility bearing in mind the ground-breaking nature and ambition and evidence of PIs creative and original thinking. More consideration to the individual career path and personal input of the applicant regarding their achievements was added.
Procedure and ranking:
For each panel, up to 44 proposals will be retained for step 2 of the evaluation.
The ranking has slightly changed, and proposals will now be ranked as follows:
Proposals that were retained to step 2 will be ranked “A invited”
Proposals that were not retained to step 2 will be ranked either “A not invited”, B or C.
A candidate whose proposal is scored A at step 1 of the evaluation, but not taken to interview (i.e., A not invited), will be free to submit a proposal in the following year’s calls.
“A invited” and “A not invited” were also added as outcomes for the first step of evaluation to SyG evaluation.
Restrictions on resubmission: PI can participate in only one main frontier research grant at any one time.
For Synergy grants, restrictions have been slightly relaxed and now apply only for proposals scoring C in step 1 in 2023 and 2022 and only on consecutive submissions to Synergy (i.e., no penalty for AdG).
Don’t forget to check on the Grant Finder tool and the calendar dedicated to European calls, for the next deadlines.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Ksenia Bagrintseva (ksenia.bagrintseva[at]pasteur.fr) and the GO Europe team (GOeurope[at]pasteur.fr).
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