Guide / Funding

How to write your first European research grant (Horizon / ERC)

Europe invests enormous amounts in research: the European Research Council (ERC) hands out hundreds of millions of euro in a single call. Accessing that money is not a matter of luck, but of understanding rules that almost nobody explains to you. After winning more than 6 million in competitive calls, here is where to start.

This is the essentials, the framework I use, not a treatise. Just enough to start well and not waste time. The detail of your own case is what we work through in mentoring.

First: does your work count as R&D?

Before you write a single line, make sure your project fits what a call understands by Research and Development. It sounds obvious, but it is where most people fail: they submit something that technically is not R&D and are out from the start.

The international reference is the Frascati manuals (from the OECD, used in more than 60 countries), which set the standard for what is R&D and what is not. Being able to identify it serves three purposes: reflecting better what you want to do, sticking to the exact points the call asks for, and accessing the associated benefits (funding, tax deductions). An example that is R&D: developing a cancer therapy at a research centre. One that is not: buying production equipment for a factory. The boundary matters, and it pays to be clear on it before you begin.

The ecosystem: ERC and Horizon

There are two big umbrellas worth distinguishing:

• ERC (European Research Council). Funds frontier research of high calibre, usually with one principal investigator and their own line. It is the route of academic excellence: think long term, a cutting-edge research line you can sustain for years, not a one-off project.
• Horizon. The European framework programme, with consortia of several partners from different countries tackling concrete challenges. Here you do not go alone: the project is built between partners.

In Horizon, partners are almost everything

If you go for a Horizon-type project, finding the right partners weighs as much as the idea. A well-balanced consortium (with the complementary profiles the call asks for, from the right countries) has far better odds than a brilliant idea poorly accompanied. Start building that network before the call opens, not the week before it closes.

The core mistake: thinking short term

European funding rewards long-term vision. The ERC above all looks for someone proposing a research line with years of runway, not an isolated experiment. If your proposal smells of “I finish this in twelve months and move on”, you are off track. Think big and long term, because that is what this money is meant for.