August 9, 2026

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The European Post

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New EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before AntalyaNew EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before Antalya
August 9, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
New EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before AntalyaNew EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before Antalya

Frontier Science Wins A Bigger Cheque Under New ERC Pilot

Jakob Santelmann
Regulatory Affairs Reporter, Research and Innovation

Leuven: In the Flemish university town whose laboratories have long punched above their weight, researchers are weighing an unusually tempting offer from the European Research Council. The council has opened the first call for its new ERC Plus Grant, a pilot scheme that hands a single investigator up to seven million euros to pursue ideas judged too ambitious for an ordinary grant. The call opened in early June, with applications due by the start of September.

The council has built its reputation over nearly two decades on a stubborn principle: fund the best scientists, let them choose the questions, and judge them on excellence alone. Its existing grants already rank among the most coveted in European science. The Plus scheme pushes that logic further. Where standard awards support a defined project, the new grant is pitched at researchers who want to chase a bigger, riskier vision over a longer horizon of up to seven years, with the money delivered as a lump sum to cut administrative friction.

Scarcity is part of the design. The council expects to award only around thirty Plus grants a year across every discipline and nationality, making the competition brutal even by its own exacting standards. Eligibility is deliberately open to investigators at any career stage, a signal that the scheme is hunting for the boldest ideas rather than the longest CVs. That breadth has drawn interest from younger scientists who feel that the most original proposals are often the first to be trimmed in conventional review.

The pilot lands at a delicate moment for European research funding. Negotiations over the next multi-year research programme, the successor to Horizon Europe, are unresolved, and the scientific community has spent months lobbying against any squeeze on frontier research. By launching a flagship instrument now, the council is staking a claim: that Europe’s answer to global competition for talent is to back individual brilliance generously, not to spread money thinly across safe bets. Critics worry that concentrating so much in so few hands risks neglecting the broader base of researchers who keep laboratories running.

Money on this scale also changes what a single scientist can attempt. Seven million euros can fund a team, expensive equipment and the freedom to follow a problem wherever it leads, including down paths that yield nothing. That tolerance for failure is precisely the point of frontier funding, and precisely what makes it hard to defend to taxpayers expecting a return.

For the universities of a country like Belgium, where research income shapes the ability to retain stars who might otherwise cross the Atlantic, the new grant is both an opportunity and a measuring stick. A handful of Plus awards would burnish a department’s standing for years. The first results of who wins, due once the autumn deadline passes and the long review concludes, will offer an early read on whether Europe’s boldest scientific bet pays off.

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